Arripanimam
by Nordfjord
Summary: AU branching off of the second year. Tom Riddle succeeded in absorbing Ginny's life-force. Voldemort isn't thrilled. How will Harry cope with the two aspects of the Dark Lord? How will they react to each other?
1. A Welcoming Home

_AU from second year. Tom Riddle manages to absorb Ginny's energy in the Chamber of Secrets. He is restored as a complete person -- now, how will Harry deal with two Voldemorts on the loose? And how will they deal with each other?_

_* * * _**Chapter 1: A Welcoming Home *** * *

"How did Ginny get like this?" Harry Potter asked slowly.

"Well, that's an interesting question," Tom Riddle said pleasantly. "I'll tell you all about it – quite soon. _Stupefy._" A flash of red lit up the entire chamber and a bolt of magical force blasted into Harry's chest, knocking him down and out.

Tom gazed down at the pair of them, Ginny and Harry, laying side by side, both unconscious. He had felt himself flash into a ghostly, almost completely noncorporeal form when he cast the Stunning Spell – the wand had nearly fallen right through his hand. And what a wand it was! He'd put so much force into the spell because he had expected to meet the same resistance that Ginny's wand had given him. But there had been no resistance whatsoever – the magic had poured out of him as freely as it had with his own wand, fifty years ago.

His form was coming back now, as solid as before he used the Stunning Spell, but he knew that it would never fully corporealize at this point. If he had waited until he was fully solid, he would have been a full human being, able to recover his own magical core just by resting for a few moments. As it was, he had set himself back far enough that Ginny would not have enough power to in her body to make him a complete person.

He looked speculatively at the boy. Should he draw energy from him, then, to complete the regenerative process? It would be a sad thing to do, to snuff out such a fierce personality and mute the booming orchestra of magic it contained. Not only that, but the boy was the very picture of Tom himself, identical to how Tom had looked at twelve, from the fierce green eyes to every angle of his face – the only difference Tom could see was that the boy was terribly skinny, as if he'd been malnourished for years. The food at the orphanage had been disgusting, but Tom had always made sure that he'd had his fair share and had never gone hungry. This boy looked like he'd been starved – and yet, even still, his magical reservoir was like a raging torrent, more powerful than Tom had seen in anyone but himself at that age, which was remarkable considering the boy's stunted growth. The boy's promise, together with the fact that Tom was fairly certain he was related to him, made him very adverse to killing him.

So, instead, as Ginny was starting to turn as transparent as Tom had been moments ago, Tom looked up to Slytherin's great simian head, idly thankful that there was no strong family resemblance _there_, and hissed in the ancestral tongue, "_Speak to me, O Slytherin._"

Salazar's great maw split open. Like a giant stone nutcracker, the lower jaw fell down as if on a hinge, leaving a gaping maw that lead into the Inner Chamber. The basilisk slithered out and Tom met his eyes without fear. It was not only because a Horcruxian phantom like Tom not be killed by an assault on his body that he allowed himself to gaze into the Snake King's eyes – another family heirloom from Salazar made him immune to the gaze, even when corporeal.

"_Come, beast of my ancestor,_" Tom cooed. The great snake slithered down the leg of the statue and up to Tom, obeying the power of a parseltongue command, until it was so close that Tom's hair was ruffled with every one of the old snake's panting breaths. The snake was ancient – by Tom's measure, it had been over eighty feet back in the 1940s, even though basilisks usually died of old age by sixty feet. Creatures that never stopped growing counted time in feet rather than years. This basilisk was not only the longest one ever recorded, but also the oldest. Basilisks were a creation of wizards, and had no natural ranges, but they did best in the hot deserts of America, Australia and Africa. This dark, wet catacomb was a far cry from the deserts that basilisks enjoyed, so it was remarkable that the creature had even reached forty feet. It was a very old specimen, and very fragile. Tom believed that if it ever bit into a person, its teeth would fall out, so he had always fed it chickens, rabbits and other creatures small enough to be eaten in one bite. A healthy basilisk in the wild would be more likely to pray on things like trolls, young dragons and horses.

This creature was near its end. Tom had no compunction with absorbing its life-force – it would soon be of no use in any case. So, as Ginny became increasingly difficult to see, and Tom began having difficulty extracting the last remnants of her life-force, he changed targets rather than struggling.

"_Arripavenefic!_"

Two green cords latched onto the great snake's eyes, connecting it to the palms of Tom's hands, and he felt a surge of power so great that he could scarcely prevent it from overwhelming him. The basilisk screamed, but it was bound to never attack or disobey its master, and could do little more than writhe in pain. Then it stopped struggling, and began to fade away as well.

Tom glanced back down. Ginny was nowhere to be seen, her essence dissolved. Actually, that wasn't true – her soul was still very much alive, trapped now in the diary. Soon she would be sharing her prison with the company of a basilisk. At least she wouldn't be alone, Tom thought, grinning. Oh, he could feel the power surging into him, now. The basilisk had proved a much more fruitful crop than the girl, and Tom was very soon a whole person, complete in his humanity but utterly inhuman. He laughed. _I'm back_.

"_Ennervate._"

Harry awoke with a jolt, his eyes snapping open so quickly that he saw the flash of blue from the Counter-Stun as the energy washed over him. He sat bolt upright, looking around frantically. Tom was there, standing over him, smiling in a way that could only be described as brotherly, twirling Harry's wand around in his fingers.

"What the hell are you doing!" Harry shouted. And then he saw, quite suddenly, laying behind Tom was what appeared to be the phantom of an enormous snake, only slightly visible. Tom, on the other hand, was fully there. And Ginny -- "Where is she?"

"She's gone, now."

Gone. That could only mean one thing. "You killed her," Harry said.

"Oh, no. She's still alive – bodiless, less than a real person, but a fully in-tact soul. She's there," said Tom, pointing to the old diary on the floor. Next to it lay Ginny's wand, which Harry seized. He jumped to his feet and pointed the wand at Tom. This wand, though – Harry looked at it with a grimace – it was nothing like his own wand, which Tom continued to twirl about absently. "Ginny Weasley is now a purely spiritual sort of creature," he grinned.

"You've --" Harry struggled to understand the situation. He glanced at the diary again. "You've replaced her. You stole her body and put her in there."

"Very clever, Harry," said Tom, flashing a friendly smile. "But it wasn't all me, you know. She's been pouring herself into my diary all year. Every word she wrote, every little bit of her eleven-year-old worries she shared with me, gave me power. She's been doing very poorly in her classes, you know – as you'd expect from someone who's only got half her magic at her disposal, the other half trapped in a book. She's been giving me her powers all year – I just took the final step, took the remainder. Of course, a weakling like Ginny Weasley didn't have enough magic in her body to make a powerful wizard like myself complete. That's why this snake is as you see it."

Harry was at a loss for words. He gaped at Tom, not really understanding. He'd never heard of anyone stealing someone else's magic except in jokes. It was sometimes said by pure-bloods that Muggle-borns had stolen their magic, but no one in their right mind believed that. This was something altogether different, and terribly real. Harry's best friend's sister was now nothing more than a memory, trapped in a diary, far, far less than a person – less in some ways than even ghosts, who at least had false, phantom bodies with which to move around and express themselves. For Ginny, it was worse by far than death. And this Tom Riddle had done it to her to escape the same fate. Harry didn't know what to say – what could you possibly say? So he settled for "How?"

"You see, cousin, I go by more than one name. I was known in a past life as the Dark Lord Voldemort. But I don't know much about that except for what this girl has told me. Voldemort, when he was sixteen, split his soul into fragments in order to insure his immortality. I am the second such fragment he made – and I very much doubt I am the last. I am an exact replica of what Voldemort – born to the name Tom Marvolo Riddle – was when he was sixteen.

"I am a Horcrux, cousin. I am the product of some of the darkest magic that has ever been known. I am Voldemort's anchor to this world, preventing his death. Many people have said that you are the only person to have ever survived a Killing Curse – but you and I know that that is not true. My other half survived as well when you reflected it at him, thanks to me and my fellow Horcruxes. I believe you've met him."

"Voldemort?" Harry said, nonplussed. Then, his face suddenly twisting into a ferocious grimace, he said, "Oh, yes, we've met. You're nothing but a ghost, living in the back of other people's heads. You're just a pathetic piece of history, remembered as the second, less successful Dark Lord of the twentieth century."

Tom's face ripped from his friendly smile to an expression of terrible hatred. "No, cousin. I am not that man. I have a body now. Do not confuse him and me – you can be sure that I will never make the mistakes that he has made. I am his opposite half – but that is not all. I am his better half. He cut out the wrong part of his soul; he trapped the best of himself in a diary."

Harry stared long into Tom's eyes, wondering how to destroy him. His thoughts leaped to the diary – if he destroyed the diary, would Tom be killed?

As though he were reading Harry's thoughts, Tom said, "No, Harry. I am no longer bound to the diary. If you destroy it, you will only destroy what remains of Ginny Weasley. I'm complete, as I've told you. The only way you can kill me now is the old fashion way."

That was enough encouragement for Harry. "_Expelliarmus!_" he shouted, swinging Ginny's wand wildly. A jet of pink bubbles flew out of the tip of his wand, and that was it. Tom was not disarmed.

"Your wand, Harry, is very unique. As was mine. I went through dozens of wands to find one that was compatible with me. As did you, yes? You won't be able to fight me with that stick, not when I'm holding this beautiful wand. Give up.

"I don't think you'll want to fight me, anyway, cousin. Not when you hear what I have to offer. This basilisk behind me has given me all that I can take from it – I'm simply overflowing with magic at this point, Harry, and I can't take any more without risk of reservoir leaks. You can have the rest, my dear cousin. I imagine I'll see you very soon – yes, very soon. Enjoy this gift... _Arripavenefic!_"

Tom waved Harry's wand again, and suddenly two thick green cables appeared, connecting the massive snake's eyes with Harry's palms. Something was surging through him – it felt like he had dropped a toaster in the tub. His body convulsed wildly, and he collapsed.

When he awoke, he was alone. Tom and the basilisk were gone. The diary and Ginny's wand lay on the slimy stone floor, a short distance away. Harry tried to sit up, but groaned with pain and collapsed in the attempt. He lay there, defeated, for a very long time, watching how the torchlight and the small pools of water cast a strange, flickering and worbling light on the walls. He turned his head, and gazed at the statue of Salazar Slytherin, whose monkey-like mouth was agape in a mockery of a grin.

Ginny was dead – or something very much like dead. Tom Riddle, the Heir of Slytherin, Voldemort's younger double (what had he called himself? A Horcrux?), had escaped.

For a length of time impossible to measure, Harry lay there. The pain slowly subsided, and he managed to get to his knees, and then to his feet. He spotted his own wand, and gripped it tightly, then pocketed Ginny's wand and the diary. He slowly made his way out of the Chamber of Secrets, aware of Slytherin's statue, still grinning at his departing back. The diary, the vessel of Ginny's soul, felt oddly heavy in his hand.

He climbed through a hole in the cave-in debris, and found Ron and Lockhart laying there, unconscious. He awoke them withby shaking their shoulders and, not hearing any of their questions, began the slow climb up the slippery chute that led to the girl's bathroom on the third floor. Ron climbed up behind him, his sobs echoing in the chute. Ginny Weasley – he hadn't known her well, but she seemed like she would be a part of his life, a feature at Hogwarts. He was used to her. He felt strange about her absence – and he felt terribly guilty for not being able to rescue her.

But he thought little of that at the moment. His mind was occupied otherwise – _Voldemort called me his cousin_, he thought with disgust, unable to deny the obvious truth behind it. _I am a Slytherin – how can I not be, as a parselmouth?_

And then his thoughts drifted in a different direction. Voldemort was back in a body. It would not be long now before the attacks started again, a new reign of terror began.... _What is a Horcrux? How is this possible?_

Harry saw a light ahead, and it was not much longer until he was pulling himself out of the slippery chute. Ron came up not long behind him. His face was ghastly pale, his eyes wide and red. He had no words. Even Lockhart, apparently sensing the sobriety of the moment, had nothing to say as they pulled him, too, out of the chute.

Myrtle spoke quietly. "Dumbledore wants to see you. He's in McGonagall's office."

They all slowly, painfully, trudged out of the bathroom and down the corridor. Portraits watched them silently as they passed by. They all knew what had happened by Ginny's absence and the group's faces.

They entered Professor McGonagall's office silently. Ron's parents were there, and so were Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall. Ron's mum was rocking in a chair, sobbing uncontrollably. His dad was staring at them blankly, evidently shocked. No one could bring themselves to ask the question they were all wondering, so Harry told them without waiting for the question. "She didn't make it," he said quietly.

Mrs. Weasley howled. Ron went and embraced her, his face as blankly shocked as his dad's. Mrs. Weasley called Ginny's name, and screeched over and over, "No! No! I don't believe you!" for twenty minutes or so. Ron and Mr. Weasley had gotten over their shock and joined her in sobbing before long. Harry sat quietly in a chair, staring at the diary in his lap. Her soul was in there.

"Professor," he said after half an hour or so, addressing Dumbledore. "May I speak with you privately?"

Dumbledore led Harry out of the office and into a classroom, then waved his wand around for a moment. He indicated that Harry should speak.

"Ginny's not all gone," Harry said quietly. "Tom Riddle – Voldemort – had part of his soul in this diary. A Horcrux, he said. He stole Ginny's life-force and locked her soul in here. She's in this diary, Sir."

Dumbledore, stricken, was silent for a while. Then he said, "There's no way to bring her back, Harry."

"Tom brought himself back. Can't we find someone for Ginny to --?"

Dumbledore took on a strange and disquieting expression. "No, Harry, we can't. Because Ginny was not willingly placed in that diary, I believe that she cannot willingly escape it."

Harry and Dumbledore were both silent for a long time. Then Dumbledore asked Harry for the diary, and he handed it over. "Harry, have you told your friend Ron that Ginny is in here?" Harry shook his head, and Dumbledore sighed and said, "For the best. I need you to tell no one, Harry. I'm going to destroy the diary and let Ginny move on."

"No!" Harry screamed, his voice breaking. "Sir – there's got to be a way...."

"No. There is none. I am very sorry, Harry."

Harry thought to himself about everything else he had planned to speak to Dumbledore about. The basilisk's magic that was now in him and Tom both – Harry's worries that he really was a descendant of Slytherin --

But he held his silence. What if Dumbledore wanted to destroy him, next?

"I understand, Sir," Harry said, very quietly. Dumbledore got up and left him in the classroom alone.

Harry sat in the corner of the classroom for a very long time, until eventually Professor McGonagall poked her head in the door and called his name.

"I'm here, Professor," he said quietly.

"Good, then," she said, stepping fully into the room and smiling reassuringly at him. "We'd thought for a moment we'd lost you again.... Come out of that hole, Mr. Potter."

He pushed himself off the ground and followed her out into the hall. "The Weasleys are still in my office," she said, nodding in that direction. "Of course, you may very well head down to the feast instead."

Harry shook his head and entered the office. What she'd said wasn't exactly accurate: only Mr. Weasley was left, and he was just about to follow the rest of his family through the green-flamed fireplace when he saw Harry. When he did, he stepped away from the hearth and up to Harry and clasped him on the shoulder.

"You did what you could, Harry," he said. He was leaning down to speak to Harry eye-to-eye, and Harry could see how those eyes were bloodshot and dim. "You put your life on the line. No one could ask you for more. Thank you."

Something hard and painful was nesting in Harry's throat and he couldn't speak at all. For lack of words, he reached into his pocket instead, and pulled out Ginny's short little oak wand; he handed it to Mr. Weasley, and then he fled the room as quickly as he could.

"Harry, it wasn't your fault," Hermione said for the umpteenth time as the train was chugging along through a mountain pass somewhere in Scotland. "You did everything you could do!"

"Don't, Hermione," he said shortly. "I'm sick of it."

"But, Harry, you were up against _You-Know-Who_, alone. How could you have possibly won out?"

Harry sent her a sharp look. "He wasn't Voldemort. He was a pimply, idiotic teenager. I should have been able to..."

"No, Harry. He was still a much older student than you, and he caught you off guard. There was just no way you could have beaten him."

Harry fell into a dark silence that lasted the rest of the ride. Even if he accepted what Hermione said – even if he allowed himself to believe that he had lost to Tom before he had even gone down into the Chamber of Secrets.... Even accepting that, which he didn't, wouldn't alleviate his guilt.

What clutched at his gut the worst wasn't his defeat by Riddle. It was how he'd handed the diary, Ginny's soul contained within, over to Dumbledore to be destroyed.... Riddle might have taken away her body, but it was Harry who, in the end, killed her.

With that on his mind, how could he bare to hear people tell him he'd tried his best to save her?

The train ride passed in black silence.

_Hello! This is my first fic, so please give me feedback on it. Hope you enjoy it._

_Nordfjord_


	2. A Family Heirloom

_AU from second year. Tom Riddle manages to absorb Ginny's energy in the Chamber of Secrets. He is restored as a complete person -- now, how will Harry deal with two Voldemorts on the loose? And how will they deal with each other?_

* * * **Chapter 2: A Family Heirloom** * * *

Tom appeared outside the gates of the Gaunt shack in Little Hangleton with a loud _crack. _He walked purposefully through the rotten old wooden gate and up the short drive. It was odd to see the Gaunt house today, so much more decrepit and wasted than it had been the last time he'd seen it. During what felt to him like a year, fifty years had actually gone by. It was amazing, considering, that the Muggle repulsion charms were still working.

Tom was the second section of Voldemort's soul that had been sheared off, created in the spring of his sixth year at Hogwarts. He'd been made his first Horcrux the summer after his fifth year, and that was today's quarry.

The house was covered in dust and mold. A mangy old dog had died in one corner of the living room and rat pellets littered every floor. These were scraped aside with Tom's foot as he looked for that old floorboard....

It wasn't hard to find: his foot fell right through it when he stepped on it, such was the rot. After he tugged his foot free from the little hole, he pulled the remnants of the board away and – there!

A little golden box sat in the depression. He pulled it out with a fierce grin and popped it open.

The little silver ring gleamed as if it has been polished yesterday. Tom stuffed it in his pocket and discarded the box casually behind him as he stood up.

Something flashed in the corner of his eye, down in the depression. An oddly shining little scrap of the mangled floorboard lay down there. But – no...!

It was a wand. A shining wand of yew. He snatched it up with no reservations – yes, it was his old wand, the wand he'd so recently parted with. Its touch sent tingles up and down his whole body. He kissed it like a lover he'd thought for dead.

But Tom wasn't the sort of person to waste much time on sappy reunions. He put his wand to work immediately:

"_Arripanimam!_"

His wand was forced out of his hand as green cords connected his palms to the silver ring, like two mossy umbilical cords. He felt like he was getting electrocuted – he hastened to control the flow, lest he be overwhelmed and knocked unconscious, or worse. Eventually, he got his barrings, and took in the ring's energy and knowledge and spirit slowly and carefully....

Ideas he'd banished from his mind as foolish months ago were suddenly on his mind again. Power rippled through his essence, threatening to overflow his reservoir. A spirit mingled with his, brushing against his soul curiously, probingly. Then, all at once, the soul in the ring combined with his own.

* * *

_SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPES_, the headline read. Thoughts flashed through Tom's head – the Blacks – Phineas Nigellus, the last Slytherin Headmaster – a dark family – one of the oldest lines.

On his gut feeling, he casually summoned the newspaper into his hands as he passed by the bin.

What he read in the paper greatly intrigued him.

* * *

Ron didn't respond to any of Harry's letters. Hermione, on the other hand, sent him several two-foot long essays about how it wasn't Harry's fault that Ginny was dead. She also reported to Harry that Ron's family had won some sort of lottery and had gone to vacation in Egypt. Harry was glad his friend and his family were getting some vacation time. If anyone deserved it, it was them.

He spent most of his days staring at the ceiling of his tiny room, eating only once every day or two, talking to no one except Hedwig, never going outside. He took out a subscription to the Daily Prophet to look for news of Tom – but, in all the huge stack of newspapers in the corner of his room, not one of them had a single mention of the Heir of Slytherin or his doings or his whereabouts. Except one small hint:

_SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPES_

_By Emeline Brontwurst_

_Sirius Black became the first man to ever escape from Azkaban on Sunday..._

_...Key man of You-Know-Who..._

_...Killed thirteen people with a single curse..._

_...There's been no sign of him. The Ministry is at a loss..._

_...the Minister for Magic today, who called Black "the right-hand man of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."..._

Was it the work of Tom? How could it be anything else? Voldemort's right-hand man doing the impossible by escaping Azkaban, a month and a half after Voldemort's Horcrux regains a body – there was no other explanation.

Harry felt like he'd been woken up from a dream. How could he dally like this, with Tom Riddle out there gaining power by the minute? He was wasting his life away, staring at a ceiling, doing nothing.

Someone knocked on his door. Without waiting to be told to come in, Uncle Vernon swing the door open. Harry lazily pointed his wand at his uncle, but didn't otherwise acknowledge the man as he stared down at the newspaper, reading it again and again.

"My sister's coming to visit us for a week. I'm picking her up tomorrow. You're to be on your best behavior. And – take a shower, boy, you stink like all hell," Uncle Vernon said, and slammed the door closed again.

He wasn't disturbed again until midnight, which is when several owls burst through his open window, each carrying a package. He relieved them all, and then sent each one except Hedwig on their way. Then, with nothing better to do, he began opening the presents. The first one was a broom servicing kit from Hermione. He read her letter:

_Happy birthday, Harry!_

_I hope this finds you well. I want to tell you again that what happened to Ginny wasn't your fault, Harry. You tried the best you could. You can't always get the better of You-Know-Who. Please try to forgive yourself._

_I got you this because I thought flying a bit might cheer you up. If you like, I'd be more than happy to meet you at the London Quidditch Stadium where you can fly around a bit. There might even be a recruiter there – you never know! Write me back if you want to meet me. I'm in France in the moment, but I can floo back to London any time you like._

_Try to have some fun, Harry._

_With love,_

_Hermione_

Harry stared at the letter for a moment. Hermione was stumbling all over herself trying to cheer Harry up. Offering to floo back from France at his whim – it was too much. He felt grateful, but also a bit annoyed, because it almost seemed to him like Hermione was trying to make him feel guilty for being depressed. It was paranoid to think like that, and he knew it, but he couldn't help it.

He put the letter and the kit aside and moved on to the next one. Hagrid had sent him a cheery letter and _the Monster Book of Monsters,_ which gave Harry quite a start. He managed to pin it under one of the legs of his bed, and then moved on, putting the attached Hogwarts letter aside.

There was one more envelope, which had been delivered by an owl Harry didn't recognize.

_Dear cousin,_ it began, and Harry's heart started beating more quickly.

_I hope you're hard at work learning new curses to destroy me. I'd be very disappointed if you were just moping like an idiot. I will come back and kill you, or join forces with you, eventually, so please don't insult me by not properly preparing._

_I tried sending you cursed letters, Portkeys and several other traps, but they didn't get through your wards. I'll have to try killing you in some other way. Or not, eh, cousin?_

_You know, you're the only person I really know now. It seems like I went forward in time to find all of my friends dead, in Azkaban, or, the worst, turned into politicians. Very sad. But, on the up, Sirius Black escaped from prison. First one ever to do so – I knew I had good taste. Hopefully, he's as loyal as they say; I'm going to attempt to communicate with him._

_Remember to prepare for me! Be good sport for me, eh?_

_Sincerely,_

_Tom_

Harry stared at the letter for a long time, dumbfounded. Voldemort was sending him cheery birthday greetings. What a nightmare. Harry was putting the envelope aside when he felt a small bump in it. He pulled out a silver ring with an ugly, gray center stone that had a triangular design etched into it. Another small scrap of paper was in the envelope as well:

_Our family ring! Enjoy it, cousin. I already took what I want out of it, so you can have it. It'll give you access to the Gaunt Family Vault – and all seven knuts still in there. Buy a Cockroach Cluster for yourself._

Harry stared at the ring for a moment and certainly did not put it on. He set it aside instead. Hermione was right, he needed to get out – there was no way that this was actually happening, and if he's been in his room staring at the ceiling for long enough to start hallucinating, something had to change. With that thought in mind, Harry pulled his Nimbus and invisibility cloak out of his trunk and went for a midnight fly.

The cold air was refreshing and invigorating. He felt like he'd slept so much that summer that he'd built up a huge store of energy, bursting to be released, and stayed out until well past dawn doing dives and loops and scaring the ducks and pidgeons.

When he got back, it was midmorning. He flew carefully in through his open window, then discarded his cloak and broom on the floor and headed downstairs. He'd stayed out until he was absolutely starving.

Aunt Marge, Aunt Petunia and Dudley were sitting in the kitchen sipping tea together. Uncle Vernon had his head in the refrigerator, looking for something to eat. Harry greeted them cheerily, "Good morning, family!"

They all jumped. Uncle Vernon knocked his head into a shelf in the fridge and the shelf fell out of place. Milk, juice, yogurt and various kinds of cheeses spilled all over the floor. Uncle Vernon slammed the fridge door shut and turned to Harry, enraged. "BOY -- !" he began, but then paled when he saw the wand Harry was idly twirling in his fingers.

"What's for lunch?" Harry asked, smiling broadly. His wand slipped a bit in his fingers and a few sparks shot out of it as he grabbed an apple from the basket on the counter.

"Dudley," Aunt Marge burst out, "where's that Smelting Stick of yours? This boy needs to learn some manners!"

But Dudley didn't get up. He was staring at Harry's wand in horrified fascination. "I said, _what's for lunch_," Harry intoned, gesturing around with his wand threateningly. "Maybe frog soup?" he suggested, smirking. "Or roast pig?" he added, glancing meaningfully at Dudley. That was all Dudley could take, as it turned out – he rushed out the back door, squealing and clutching his rump, and Harry watched through the window as he attempted to hop the fence into the neighbors yard. He succeeded in pulling a board right off the fence instead.

"Well, hop to it," he said dismissively, and turned around. Aunt Marge was roaring in outrage, threatening to beat him silly – but she was a huge woman and was having trouble getting out of her seat to come after him.

He slipped out of the kitchen casually, and headed down to the basement.

"Let's see..." he muttered to himself, going through boxes. _This one's got Christmas decorations; here's a broken microwave; old telly; some of Vernon's old clothes..._ "Ah-ha!"

A box of camping gear, complete with a tent in a bag, a couple of sleeping bags, some crummy pots and pans, and a little kerosene burner. This last was what he took after a careful inspection – the little tank of white gas indicated it was about 97% full – no doubt the Dursleys had given up on their first cooking experiment with the burner and had gone out for chips instead.

Harry spent the next half-hour clearing a little space in the middle of the boxes and debris, then he went for lunch.

Everyone was still there. On the counter, there were several plates of sandwiches, sliced apples, bananas, little wax-covered bits of cheese and three kids of juice. Harry casually walked around the counter and sat down between Dudley and Petunia.

"Oh, thank you, Dudley. How thoughtful," he said as he took Dudley's plate away from him. "All my favorites," he added, digging into one of the little sandwiches.

Dudley glared daggers at him for a moment, before he suddenly caught sight of Harry's wand. Then he just got up and served himself a new plate.

Everyone was silent as they ate. Even Marge was acting nervous – no doubt the Dursleys had fed her some lie to explain: he always behaved like this, was in fact quite sociopathic, according to the counselors of his school for criminals, and it was better not to make him angry if you didn't want to wake up to find that he'd done something wicked in the night.

That was perfectly fine for Harry. All he'd ever wanted was some peace and quiet.

Ripper, Marge's nasty little dog, bound into the room barking like a madman. He immediately latched on to Harry's leg and ripped at his pants furiously.

"Call the dog off, Marge," Harry said, calm as you please.

"Sic him, Ripper," Aunt Marge chuckled. Her jowls jiggled nastily; Harry felt suddenly ill watching her – maybe it was time to cut this luncheon short, anyway.

"Call the dog off or you'll wake up without a hair on your head," Harry threatened. His voice was unconcerned. The dog was very small, and wasn't doing any damage beyond ripping up some of Dudley's huge old pants. Aunt Petunia grabbed Aunt Marge's arm and nodded anxiously, but Marge wouldn't relent. She laughed again.

"All bark and no bite, you," she sneered. "Little Ripper will tear you to shreds."

He pushed back his chair, loudly scraping it over the linoleum floor. He politely excused himself, kicked Ripper in the ribs, said, "I'll be needing some new pants, I suppose, Uncle Vernon," and headed back to the basement.

In short order, a sturdy little metal table was moved into the center of the room. Harry cut a hole in the middle of it to nest the burner in, then fastened a bit of a flattened steel bicycle rim above it. His cauldron was placed gently on top.

Another table was covered in several of Aunt Petunia's cutting boards. Another in little jars and bottles and sacks of ingredients: newt eyes floated in a bluish liquid, little rat tails wriggled in their sack as if they still had a rat attached.

Then he threw on a Hogwarts robe and got to work. Within hours, he had several jars sitting in a corner of the basement, with labels reading _pimple paste, swelling sltn, baldness balm _and _dimness drt. _The second-year potions would be his primary defensive measure against the Muggles.

Whistling a jaunty tune, he scrubbed out the cauldron in the little plastic sink that the washing machine drained into, then headed upstairs with jars in hand.

_Dear Hermione, _he wrote with his little wooden dip pen,

_I took your advice and went for a bit of a fly last night. I feel a lot better, it was a really good idea, so thank you. And thanks for the broom kit, too, it's excellent. I swear my Nimbus went faster than ever after I polished and groomed it._

_My uncle's sister, Marge, is over. She's a real nightmare, but I haven't had to be in the same room with her much, yet. Still, can't wait until she's gone._

_I got a really strange letter for my birthday that I wanted to talk to you about. Tell me when you're back in England – but don't rush. I want to meet you somewhere. We can go to Diagon Alley together, if you like._

_Don't worry too much, I'm getting better. How's Ron doing? He won't reply to my letters._

_Harry_

After the ink had dried, he cut his letter off of the parchment roll and folded it up very small. He stuck it in a little tiny leather bag, and tied that to the foot of his snowy owl. Harry watched Hedwig fly off until she was no longer visible.

That night, he went out flying again, practicing his dives by throwing a Galleon and then trying to catch it before it hit the ground. Maybe it was illegal to fly around over Muggle rooftops, but it reminded Harry that he was a wizard – something that was easy to forget over a long summer vacation. Besides, he was invisible!

* * *

Harry fingered the small gold coin in his hand, surveying the neighborhood from above. The moon was nearly full, but Harry's cloak prevented anyone from seeing him. He lifted the front tip of the Nimbus slightly, and drifted slowly upwards.

He passed through the clouds, soaking himself to the skin. It felt nice, though, to get a little bit wet – like going for a summer swim – so instead of bursting up above the clouds, he bent over his broom and urged it forward with a slight movement of the hips – he zoomed right through the thick haze, invisible to all the Muggles below, and let out a laugh of joy as he burst up through the roof of the clouds.

Behind him, he could see a straight line, marking the path he had taken, cut through the cloud. Maybe he wasn't as invisible as he'd thought. He laughed again.

He soared up, up, up, wondering how high his broom could go. As a Seeker, he was used to being hundreds of feet above the ground, but a regulation Quidditch pitch ended two hundred yards up – the Snitch couldn't go above that, and any player who went that high suffered a penalty for his trouble. Now, he was perhaps four hundred yards up, wondering what his limit was. His ears popped over and over; the air was cold and hard to breathe up here, but he didn't care.

He took a big breath and zoomed up faster than ever. The clouds below looked like a vast gray carpet, featureless. Not too far to his left, a small propeller-plane was flying parallel to him, lights flashing like jolly, winking eyes.

He couldn't breathe at all, now, and was starting to get a dizzy headache. How many miles up was he? He couldn't see his house, or even his town, in the glowing urban haze below. His hair and cloak were crunching with ice. His eyes burned and his whole body ached from the cold and the lack of air.

He dropped the Galleon, closed his eyes and counted to ten, and dove.

He couldn't see it – it was far below him and it was just too dark. So he measured the wind, estimated the path the Galleon would likely take, and flew down.

It wasn't like skydiving at all. It was not a free-fall, and he didn't just reach a terminal velocity. He fell, faster and faster, pushing his Nimbus to accelerate more and more –

The Galleon! He spotted it, he was fast approaching it. It had stopped gaining speed, and was just sort of hanging there, spinning around frantically. He adjusted his course slightly, reached out his arm, and had it.

Then he passed down through the clouds in a flash – the water slammed against his face as he pummeled through it, and he pulled up on the Nimbus, urging it to slow – the clouds weren't far above the ground, the hard asphalt, someone's roof – he slowed as much as he could, but he knew he wouldn't be able to stop in time, he was just going too fast – Nimbuses were known for their acceleration, not their braking --

Something caught his eye – he aimed his broom for it, took a deep breath, and --

SPLASH!

His face smashed against the water, breaking the surface tension violently. He felt like he'd smashed into concrete. He was soon deep underwater, trying to stop, the Nimbus still hurtling to the bottom. The sides of his head felt like someone was smashing bricks into them, the pressure change hurting his ears – and then he slammed, hard, into the bottom of the lake.

He couldn't see anything – he choked on a mouthful of silt and water. _Do brooms work underwater?_ He worried, frantic. He turned the Nimbus around and urged it, with all his might, to fly – to swim – up, up, up.

It was slow, and he was choking and spitting – he was drowning. But the pressure on his ears was lessening, so he knew he was going up. Suddenly, he saw the moon through the water, and then, a quarter of a heartbeat later, he was out, sputtering, panting, spitting, and grinning like a madman. He floated idly toward the shore, fingering the Galleon all the while. Somehow his cloak had even stayed on – unlike his shoe, which he seemed to have lost at the bottom of the lake.

"Crappy shoe anyway," he said to himself, grinning, as he landed on the shore. His uncle had been forced (by threat of Permanent Purpling Potion, which he'd demonstrated on the front door) to buy Harry a whole new wardrobe. Today, however, he was decked out entirely in his old rags. A lost shoe meant nothing to him, because he had several pairs of new shoes packed away in his trunk. He'd long whined that all of Dudley's hand-me-downs were far too big and baggy, but he was more understanding with Aunt Petunia now: he'd tried on X-Small shirts and as often as not found them too baggy. His pants size ended up being 28x32. It had taken a very long time for him to find a shop with clothes his size; but he had, and now he looked presentable, at least when he chose to wear those new clothes.

Cloak, robe, shirt were hung in a low branch as Harry sat down in a pile of prickly leaves under an old oak to enjoy the warm summer night. Wrestling with his last soggy trainer and his two soaked socks, Harry looked out at the lake, appreciating how the moon's mirror image danced entrancingly in the recently disturbed water. He eventually lay down, letting the hot breeze play against his still panting chest. He had no idea where he was – there was no lake within miles of Privet Drive – but he didn't let that concern him as he relaxed under the great old oak.

In a few days, he was going back to Hogwarts.

The last month of his summer had been an unintelligible jumble of flying and brewing and studying, interspersed with the occasional trip to Diagon Alley to refill his potions supplies or to check out a book from the London branch of the Central Wizard's Archive, the magical public library.

The thought of finally going back to Hogwarts led to him closing his eyes with a dopey grin. Quidditch, the ability to finally use his wand again, the enchanted staircases and the secret passages and the insulting portraits and the Great Hall, open to the sky above....

The giant snake leaped out of the lake and slithered forth. Harry started and jumped without delay onto his Nimbus and was ten feet into the air in two heartbeats. The snake got on its own Nimbus – the Two Thousand and One model, the only broom in the entire world faster than Harry's Nimbus Two Thousand – and Harry watched in shock as the snake hopped aboard, bent its knees, and – chased!

Harry pushed his broom to go _faster, please --!_ but it was wet from the lake, bristles coated in silt and algae and worms... no, not worms – his bristles crawled with dozens of snakes – his bristles _were_ snakes! He gave a shout and leaped off his broom to get away from the slithering little beasts, and then screamed again as he saw the town below racing towards him.

His fall was broken by the soft asphalt, to his relief – he bounced all down Privet Drive on his bum, the snake on the Two Thousand and One flying not far behind, gaining ground on him. He urged the pavement to bounce him _higher, faster!_, and it did.

He bounced high, high into the air, through the clouds, and then landed right behind the snake on the Two Thousand and One. He had no choice in the matter, he would fall if he didn't, but Merlin help him for doing it – he wrapped his arms around the snake's waist and held on for his life.

The snake laughed nastily, and turned to look at Harry over its shoulder, and Harry saw its face and its face was Harry's. The Harry-snake said, "Hold on, tightly now, hold on!" and its forked tongue reached out and tickled Harry's nose.

Then they dove for the Galleon, and they reached out and caught it in their hand, both caught it with one hand, a shared hand –

Harry screamed.

Harry woke up.

Harry lay on the lake shore, bare chest and feet, soaking wet pants, filthy with mud. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and the warm breeze had turned icy cold. Harry was freezing, desperately clutching the large black dog for warmth.

The dog looked at Harry with reassuring eyes, but Harry could not be calmed. He got on his Nimbus – his Two Thousand, there was no Two Thousand and One – and flew home. It took a long time to find his town, and then his neighborhood, and then his house – when he did, he flew right into the bathroom and took a shower. He fell asleep just as the sun rose, and, like his owl, slept all day long.

When he awoke, around five, he retrieved the little silver ring from his trunk and stared at it for a very long time.

That owl joined him in his flight the next night, and they raced and dove and maneuvered with joy. But he definitely didn't dive back into the lake. The snake and the dog he didn't see again – and he was not sure if he had seen them, or which of them he had seen and which was a dream.

* * *

Tom awoke early that morning. His hunt for Black had been bunk; not a single trace of the man was anywhere to be found. That was more or less as expected, he thought, considering that the man had evaded the Aurors and the dementors and, likely, Albus Dumbledore himself.

He cast a few simple illusions over himself and, as a redhead, Apparated to the mountainside just north of Hogsmeade.

Then he headed into the Forbidden Forest.


	3. Home Again

* * * **Chapter 3: Home Again *** * *

It was well into August when Hermione and Ron returned from France and Egypt, Hermione on the 20th and Ron on the 25th. By that time, Harry had long since given up waiting for them. (Wouldn't it have been nice if they'd told him the date of their return? But he couldn't ask without worrying about _rushing_ them.) On the tenth of August, _the_ _Standard Book of Spells Grade 3_, _Intermediate Transfiguration _and_ Unfogging the Future_ had all joined the _Monster Book of Monsters_ in Harry's trunk – while Harry's Gilderoy Lockhart collection had been sold back to the bookstore at a small profit, thanks to their signatures (the fact that Lockhart's mental state hadn't hit the press yet probably helped, too).

Meanwhile, his potion supplies had been refilled several times. Potions were about the only sort of magic Harry could do outside of Hogwarts (not including reading tea leaves, which he read about in _Unfogging the Future_), so he kept himself busy by brewing batch after batch of the potions on the third year curriculum. Even though he hated Potions as a class, brewing potions helped him the same way flying the Nimbus Two Thousand helped: he was reminded that he was a wizard and Privet Drive only accounted for a tiny part of his life. In his dozens of brews, he only had one small explosion, which resulted in large splashes of a table in the basement being engorged – it was now rather lumpy and useless.

_But at least it didn't get on my face_, Harry reminded himself, staring in the mirror and imagining an engorged nose.

Today was the 31th of August, and Harry had been busily packing up his belongings all morning. He'd agreed to meet Hermione in Diagon Alley in a few hours and to bring his trunk along. She had, in very un-Hermioneish fashion, waited until the last possible moment to get her school supplies. Harry was invited to come along for the ride and stay at Hermione's place in Wandsworth for the night. He was glad for a break in his monotonous summer, even if it was just to carry someone else's shopping bags, and was anxious to see Hermione again. Ron still hadn't answered any of his letters, and the company of an owl, a cauldron and a broomstick alone was rather unfulfilling.

Uncle Vernon hadn't liked it, but Harry had managed to get him to drop him off outside the Leaky Cauldron (wrestling with a trunk on a bus was a nightmare Harry didn't want to experience). The whole drive there, Harry had chattered happily to him about Transfiguration, discussing how they would be learning in third year how to transfigure animate objects ("Such as pigs and walruses," he said pointedly) into inanimate objects ("Like socks and dust bins. Imagine that!" he said, flashing a huge grin). Uncle Vernon had merely stared ahead and tried to ignore him as best he could.

Now Harry was being helped by Mr. Granger to heft his trunk into the boot of a little blue two-door coach.

"Mr. -- Micheal, I'm not so sure if this will fit!"

But Mr. Granger (who'd told Harry, "Please call me Micheal!") grinned sneakily and said, "Arthur Weasley and I met last year – I'll only say this: I'm quite sure your trunk will fit."

Remembering Ron's dad's flying Ford Anglia, Harry grinned and gave a great heave. The trunk fit easily – Harry peered in and estimated that another two or three trunks of that size wouldn't have quite filled it. Hedwig's cage was put in the back seat, and Harry and Mr. Granger stepped up to the curb.

"I could have sworn it was over here. Are you sure?" Mr. Granger asked a moment later, pointing at a solid brick wall.

"Yes, I'm sure," Harry smiled. "The door's this way." He led the way into the Leaky Cauldron, Mr. Granger following him through the door stiffly, eyes closed. The man gasped with relief when he passed through the door frame unsmooshed.

"Nasty trick, really," he said brightly. "I mean, if you had been joking? My nose would be flattened good."

Hermione and Mrs. Granger were just paying for their omelets and standing up when Harry and Mr. Granger reached them.

"Harry!" Hermione cried, and hugged him tightly – but briefly. She broke apart and glanced, embarrassed, at her grinning parents. Both of them had big smiles of beautiful straight, white teeth.

"You've got your list, honey?" Mrs. Granger (Harry didn't know her first name) asked.

"Yes, mum."

"Well, then, be good."

Hermione's parents left, and Harry and her went into the Alley.

"This place amazes me every time," Hermione gushed. Harry wasn't so excited, since he'd been there several times over the summer to get potions supplies, and it hadn't been nearly as crowded any of those times. He grinned broadly anyway. Then Hermione went to business. "I've still got some gold from last year, but we ought to head to Gringotts in any case. There's no bank in Hogsmeade from what I've read, so I need to plan for that now. You got permission to go, didn't you?"

"Of course," said Harry, remembering how he'd forced Uncle Vernon to give his signature by threatening to leave Dudley as a tiny little blue person for the whole year.

"Oh good. I wasn't sure if your relatives would sign it, you know, from what you told me about them," she said as they reached the marble stairs in front of Gringotts. Gringotts was as beautiful as ever, finer than any of the buildings on near-by White Hall. The pointy little green goblins sneered nastily at them as they passed through the enormous bronze doors.

"I convinced them," Harry said. The bank was as crowded as the rest of the alley, the queue for a teller stretching almost to the shining bronze doors. Hermione ignored the queue entirely and led Harry off to the left, where there were several small purple boxes attached to a wall.

"What're these?" he asked bewilderedly.

"Money boxes," Hermione answered, piling her paper Muggle money into one. "Put Muggle money in and close the lid, and out comes gold," she explained. Sure enough, when she closed the lid, there was the slightest flash of light visible through the crack. Hermione took one of the complementary hemp sacks and opened it wide under the box – the bottom folded down and the coins fell right into the sack, tinkling like little Christmas bells. Hermione tied the bag shut brusquely.

"Handy," Harry said, and followed her out of the bank. The queue for a teller had only grown longer, making Harry very grateful that at least one thing was easier for Muggle-borns than for pure-bloods.

Hermione checked her list, which was the parchment Hogwarts list with a few extra scribbles on it. "I need a lot of stuff from the apothecary.... rat tails, fluxweed – used that up on the Polyjuice – newt brains _and_ eyes, salamander skin...."

"I need some stuff there, as well," Harry said. Even since his trip here four days ago, he'd used almost all of his snake fangs and dried spiders, both of which were called for in Engorging Potions, and, in addition, he was starting to suspect that his brass measuring scales were a bit off.

The apothecary was as dark, dingy and grimy as ever. "Rat tails first," Hermione said, and started heading off.

"Fluxweed is right here, Hermione," Harry said, pointing to about the forth bin from the door.

"Nice eye, Harry," she complimented, scooping some of the reddish root into a baggy.

"Not really," he deflected, scooping some into a bag as well. "I just got some fluxweed last week and I remembered where it was. I had a hard time finding it then, though."

"If you just got some last week, what's that for?" she said, eyebrows up as she looked at his baggy.

"Well, I used a bit of it...."

She gave him an impressed grin. "Getting ahead in Potions, Harry?"

Well, that hadn't really been the intention. He'd just been trying to do some magic, any sort of magic – if he had the choice, he'd be much more likely to do Charms or Transfiguration work. Still, even if he hadn't been meaning to get ahead, it was true, so he said, "Yeah, I guess so."

They finished up fairly quick, thanks to Harry knowing where everything was (which earned him more looks of impressed surprise from Hermione), and left the shop with bags of ingredients, Harry's new bronze scales and Hermione's new mortar-and-pestle set.

"Tons of new books this year," Hermione commented when they were in the bookstore.

"Not for me – I only had to get four new ones. What are your electives, again?"

"Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination and Muggle Studies," she answered promptly, dumping another book into her basket.

"Isn't that everything they offer? How will you even have that much time?"

"Well, I'm not taking Alchemy or Paraphysiology – although they looked really interesting! Maybe I should talk to Professor McGonagall to add them -- and I'm sure they didn't schedule the classes so they overlap, how dumb would that be?"

"That's a good point. How many elective classes do most people take?"

"Oh, two or three. Percy took three, but Fred and George only took Care of Magical Creatures. Obviously you want as many O.W.L.s as you can get, but if you take too many you'll end up failing all of them. I'm going to have a hard next two years, Harry."

"Just two years?"

"Well, I'm not going to keep taking everything for N.E.W.T.s, am I? I'm just going to pick what I like, or what my career requires, and stick to it and get rid of the rest. I don't want to graduate Hogwarts with a head of gray hair."

Harry thought about that for a while. What career did he want? Would Care of Magical Creatures and Divination get him there? Certainly Hermione's huge stack of texts would get her a better job than Harry's much smaller stack. Harry's Divination text was God-awful, and he hadn't even been able to read his Care of Magical Creatures text (a copy of which an attendant was wrestling with for Hermione presently). Compared to Hermione's business-like Runes and Arithmancy books, Harry couldn't imagine Divination or Creatures getting him a good job. And, much more importantly, he could imagine divining Voldemort to death or sicking pixies on Tom Riddle.

"You said we can add? Can I drop as well?" Harry asked.

"Oh, sure, just talk to Professor McGonagall first day and she'll set you straight." But then Hermione eyed him dangerously and said, sharply, "Wait, you want to _drop_ something?"

Harry hastened to explain. "I want to swap Divination and Creatures – not really dropping, switching more like. What's the paraphysiology thing?"

"Oh, healing stuff, magical anatomy, that sort of thing. Madam Pomfrey and some of the St. Mungo's healers teach it in turns."

"That sounds interesting," Harry said slowly. "Maybe... Arithmancy is where you study how to make spells and all that, yeah? Maybe those two.... Maybe Runes, I don't know...."

"Those classes are much harder than Divination and Creatures, you know," Hermione cautioned, but even as she spoke she passed him an Arithmancy book from a near-by shelf.

"Percy took three classes, you said. I'm at least as smart as Percy. Don't bother with _Unfogging the Future, _you can have mine." So Harry left the bookstore with two new texts under his arm.

"I need a bit of parchment and ink, and then I think I'm done," Hermione told him, eying her list critically. After their quick stop at the stationary store, they sat under the umbrellas outside of the ice cream parlor for a while, munching on cones of peanut-pumpkin sherbet.

"I'm glad you decided to take some more serious classes. I hope Ron will be all right with just me for company in Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, though."

Harry hadn't thought of that. After sending about twenty letters to Ron and getting none back, he'd tried not to think much about Ron at all – it just reminded him of Ginny and Tom Riddle and the basilisk and the diary and all of his mistakes. Tom Riddle was still out there somewhere, had probably joined up with Sirius Black by now. Gaining power, soon he'd be reigning terror...!

"I doubt he'll be disappointed," Harry said. "I got a letter I wanted to talk to you about. From Tom Riddle."

Hermione gasped so forcefully that most of her ice cream fell off its cone, right onto her lap. "From _Tom Riddle?_ As in -- ?"

"Yeah. It's in my trunk, I'll show you later. He said he was trying to meet up with Sirius Black. Sent me a ring, the Gaunt Family Ring. I checked it out in the library over there --" he pointed down the street, where the Diagon Alley branch of the Central Wizard's Archive was, and continued. "The Gaunts were a wing of the Slytherin family. Voldemort's family. Tom reckons --" Harry glanced around. No one was listening. "Tom reckons I'm his cousin or something, so he sent me the ring. I think it was a joke. I think he's a bit of a joker."

Hermione stared for a moment, then said, "You got to give it to Dumbledore."

Last time he gave something to Dumbledore – something that had Ginny Weasley's soul in it – Dumbledore had blown it up, or done whatever it is you do to destroy possessed diaries. "Maybe," he said evasively, and, when Hermione was about to press, he said, more firmly, "_Maybe,_ Hermione. I have to think about it. I haven't told you everything. But, look, do you think I am?"

"You are what?"

"_Voldemort's cousin!_" he snapped. "I've been thinking, and I reckon that's why he tried to wipe my family out to start with. Because he wanted to be the only Slytherin running around. That was Ernie MacMillan's theory, last year, remember? Did I ever tell you that the Sorting Hat tried to sort me into Slytherin? I had to beg."

Hermione was quiet for a long minute. What was left of her ice cream started melting and dripping down her hand. Then she said, "You're probably right. I can't think of any other reason, since your parents weren't Aurors or anything like that. _And_ you're a parselmouth."

Harry nodded grimly. "And the other thing he said. He's trying to join up with Sirius Black. Have you read the Daily Prophet lately? Black was Voldemort's top man. He killed tons of people."

Hermione nodded and said, "But the Aurors will have a better time of finding the two of them together, at least."

"But the Aurors aren't looking for Tom!" Harry hissed. His voice grew more and more frantic as he spoke. "He's no where in any of the papers. Dumbledore's trying to keep it quiet or something – trying to contain it – like you can _contain_ Voldemort – so the Aurors and dementors are only looking for Black. And what if they _do_ find them? This is Voldemort and his key enforcer, you know – they'll _cream _the Aurors. The Aurors couldn't do squat back when we were babies, everything was going gold for Voldemort, it was only _luck_ that he got taken out, that's why everyone's so happy about me, 'cause no one expected Voldemort to lose! -- and Black's already beat the dementors, so we know that he can --!"

"Harry! Be _quiet!_" Hermione hissed. It was true: Harry had stood up and was practically yelling the last bit. People all around flinched and stared when he shouted Voldemort's name, and he looked around, abashed.

It was several minutes before either of them said anything else. They both nibbled their ice cream in silence. Then Harry said, "And Tom wants me to join him."

Hermione gasped and had no words. She stared at him, dumbstruck.

"Voldemort tried to get me to join him too, first year."

"Well, you're _not,_ obviously."

"No, of course not! But, I just wonder, why do they want me so badly? Tom could have killed me in the tunnel. Voldemort could have killed me first year – well, he tried to knock me off my broom, but that's it."

"He didn't want to give himself away, Harry. He wanted the Stone, remember? He couldn't afford to be discovered."

"Yeah, but... why didn't he just shoot another Killing Curse at me in front of the Mirror of Erised? He tried to sweet-talk me instead."

Hermione frowned at him. "I don't know how Voldemort thinks, Harry. Maybe he just wants you to kneel before him before he kills you. Psychopaths are like that."

Harry nodded and stood up, then helped Hermione up. They walked quietly back to the Leaky Cauldron. The bus stop wasn't a block away, and they and hopped on a bus down to Wandsworth from there. After thirty minutes, Hermione said, "Our stop," and pulled the dangler. They hopped off, and Hermione led Harry down a few blocks of tall, terraced buildings, constructed entirely out of red and yellow and black bricks. No one around here had immaculate front yards like the Dursleys', or any yards at all. As if to compensate, balconies and open windows showed peeks of the greenest foliage. As they walked down the streets, Hermione would occasionally say, "That's my old primary," or "There's my parents' dental office," or "my cousin Brady used to work at that shop, but he got sacked."

Hermione's house was an end terrace, so it only shared one wall. It was constructed from purplish bricks and had a high stoop with an elegant black handrail. The steps were so old that the middles were worn an inch below the edges. The front steps elevated them about six feet, and ended with a porch covered in potted plants and an old, dark door. Hermione got a little bronze key out of her pocket and let them in – the door squeaked loudly as they passed through.

Old, brown, leather furniture was strewn all about and slightly worn-out landscapes hung on every wall. Each floor was very cramped, with only a couple rooms, but there were four of them, so it was hardly any smaller than the Dursley's place. There weren't enough lights or windows, and the house was very dark.

Hermione led him up to the first floor, where there was a room with a sofa, a telly and Harry's trunk stuffed in one corner. "I'll be back in a bit," she said, and darted up two more flights of stairs. Harry went over to his trunk and started carefully refilling each of his flasks and beakers and jars and sacks of potions ingredients, then he tested his new bronze scales again, and then he put it all, and his new books, into the trunk and closed it.

He looked around the room a bit more. Portraits of people with big front teeth and bush hair were on every surface – Hermione's parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and so on. He examined several of them closely. _Here's one of Hermione when she was a kid,_ he thought. Not that you could see her face – she was hiding it behind a bright green biology text. She hid her face well enough, but there wasn't a book big enough to hide her bush of frizzy hair, which was visible on all sides.

Another showed Hermione, probably around five or six, with a baby on her knee. Hermione grinned toothily at the camera as the baby pulled a face.

He heard someone pounding down the stairs, and Hermione came in, flushed and grinning.

"Who's this?" he asked her, pointing at the picture.

Her grin only faltered the slightest bit as she said, "My sister, Gertrude. She's not around anymore. Come on." She grabbed his hand and pulled him up the stairs with her. If Harry had been someone a bit thicker, or someone a bit less familiar with loss, he would have asked the next painful question.

The carpet on the last two flights was much more worn out than the carpet on the first flight had been, and Harry formed the picture in his head of the grinning six-year-old Hermione from the picture running up and down them over and over. Hermione pulled him behind her at a run, and he stumbled as he tried to keep up.

Hermione's room, on the top floor, was a book shrine. Bookshelves against every wall, stuffed with books – plus books that didn't fit on the shelves sitting in stacks on the floor and the desk and under the bed and in the closet. Hermione's bed was sort of floating in the middle of the room, since she had evidently decided that putting it in the corner like most people did used up too much of the wall space that could otherwise be used for bookshelves. The whole place looked like the Hogwarts library plus a bed and some shopping bags and dirty laundry on the floor (which she quickly kicked under the bed to hide from view). A few patches of pink wallpaper were visible here and there in between the shelves.

Hermione gestured him over and had him help drag her Hogwarts trunk out from under the bed. "I got it in France; didn't think Hedwig could carry it to you, so I just sent the servicing kit," she said, pulling a large, polished brown oval box out from behind where the trunk had been. "Obviously, when we get to Hogwarts, you can shrink it, but.... Go on, open it up."

Harry snapped open the little brass latches and lifted the top. He gasped. Inside was something that resembled a miniaturized Quidditch pitch: six little bronze poles that looked very much like bubble-blowing wands poked out from either side of an oval plane of deep green marble. The whole thing gleamed beautifully.

"Woah. It's beautiful."

"That's not all!" Hermione grinned. She was suddenly holding a Daily Prophet. "Let's see – it's about six twenty... Ah-ha!" She yanked her wand out of a pocket, tapped the side of the box and said, "International: Mongolia versus Indonesia!"

Fourteen tiny little figures appeared above the pitch, wearing pink and blue Mongolian robes and red and white Indonesian. The Chasers appeared in mid-action, struggling furiously over a slippery Quaffle. A Mongolian Beater swung his bat and a bludger flew right into the knot of struggling Chasers, breaking them apart. An Indonesian came out with the Quaffle, passed it – and Indonesia scored. A score-board appeared from somewhere, reading "000 : 090."

"It's live," Hermione explained. "It's how wizards watch matches – no tellies, you know."

Harry stared, mouth agape, as the Mongolian Chasers made rude gestures and shouted at their Beater in silence. "This is amazing."

"No one in England cares about Mongolia and Indonesia – not with the World Cup a whole year away still. But for local games, you'll be able to hear announcers on the built-in Wizarding Wireless. It automatically tunes to the right station for you."

"This is incredible!" Harry exclaimed. He didn't have a word good enough to express how much he adored the little board, so he just said a bunch of words that came somewhat close: "Brilliant, wonderful, stupendous! This is amazing!"

"You've said that one already," Hermione told him, smiling in satisfaction.

* * *

Of course, the first thing Voldemort did when he realized that one of his Horcruxes was running rampant was to try to round up his remaining Horcruxes.

He cursed himself again for his folly. Why had he imbued that diary with Alertness Charms? Why had he lent the power of possession to the thing? His foolish desire to unleash the basilisk again had led to ruin. Most of the great dark sorcerers not only didn't make their Horcruxes wise and strong, but made them dumb and feeble: few men had ever severed their souls without casting on the unfavored half Confunding Charms or Memory Charms, stripping knowledge and self-conscience right out of the thing. Voldemort had made sure that his Horcrux would be wide awake and ready to act. What a fool he had been!

The ring had been a bust, as he'd expected. The floorboard under which he'd stashed the Ring-Horcrux, and later his wand, was completely destroyed, as if someone had stepped through it. It had been a desperate move, back in 1981, when he'd stuffed his wand under the floorboard for safe-keeping as one of the last acts of his old body – he'd been crumbling into glowing little green shards, and, even mere minutes after the Killing Curse had been reflected upon him, he was barely even humanoid. Now, he regretted his haste deeply – he had counted on his wand being there when he got his body back and came for it. The loss of his wand pained him far more than the loss of his two Horcruxes.

He had to keep that slimy little ball of ungrateful dark magic from taking any more of his possessions....

Nagini was the most valuable. She was his youngest Horcrux – or, rather, his newest – and, as such, contained the oldest part of his soul of any of them. If that pathetic Diary-Horcrux got a hold of her, he would acquire all of her knowledge and a portion of her power. Nagini had been imbued with a fragment of his soul in 1976, very late in Voldemort's studying. Although Nagini herself was just a stupid snake, the Horcrux inside of her knew everything that he'd learned up to 1976 – which included the locations of the remaining three Horcruxes, the Cup, the Diadem and the Locket.

Luckily, Nagini hadn't left his side since he'd created her Horcrux. She'd loyally followed him through the forests of Albania, the mountains of Yugoslavia, the chill tundra of Finland and all of his other hiding places. She'd weaned him on her milk, she'd found him little mammals to possess. Voldemort believed she loved him. She was safe, for now, from the Diary.

The next-most valuable was the Diadem: made in 1962, it contained a large portion of his Dark Arts repertoire. It knew some of his oldest, loyalest allies. He could not afford it to be taken from him. Worse: unlike the Cup and the Locket, the Diadem would be easy to find for the Diary-Horcrux. Although nearly nobody in the world knew of the Hiding Place, Voldemort's name was on the short list of those who did – and he'd known since his fourth year, before he'd created either the Ring- or the Diary-Horcrux. The Diary knew that he liked to hide his things in that old secret room, and there was a good chance the Horcrux would come and look there, would find it, and would absorb it just like the Ring. Only, unlike the Ring, which contained a younger version of Voldemort than the Diary did, the Diadem would have much to teach.

In defense of the Diadem, Voldemort found himself skulking about the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts, waiting.

When school began, in one short day, a couple hundred idiotic little kids would be running all about the school grounds. Eventually – maybe after a week, maybe after a whole term – some unsuspecting kid would wander too close to the edge of the forest, that Voldemort might possess him. He still had no body of his own and Nagini and the animals of the forest were all either too dumb to possess, or too obtrusive to sneak all the way up to the sixth floor unnoticed, or too powerfully magical for Voldemort to control in his weakened state. Only a student could do it, so Voldemort waited and waited.

* * *

Harry was struggling against the almost overpowering urge to stare forlornly out the window. That's how he'd spent the first two thirds of his summer, all the way up to his birthday, and it hadn't done him an ounce of good. _Merlin help me_, he thought, _but I'm taking Tom's advice_. The letter he'd received from Tom Riddle on his birthday had been like a shock – it had jolted him out of a haze of complacent depression. It had made him jump on his broom and wake himself up from his dazed idleness. Lake plunges notwithstanding, flying had helped him tremendously. The awakening jolt had also made him study his subjects and practice his potion making in order to remind himself that he was a _wizard_, not an impotent, certainly not a Muggle; he was a creature of power and of _action_.

On the Hogwarts Express, there was little chance of brewing or flying, which left him to study; Harry found himself trying to get a leg up on his new subjects, since he'd already looked through and for all of his old subjects (and those for Divination and Care for Magical Creatures). He'd digested as much Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration as his stomach could handle over the month of August – which wasn't as much as it might have been, since the thought of wandmagic made him feel ill, reminding him that he was cut off from the vast majority of all of his powers. Even so, he'd read most of both _Intermediate Transfiguration_ and _the Standard Book of Spells Grade 3, _as well as his old first-year Defense book, _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_. Compared to any of those, his electives books proved rather boring, but enlightening, and he managed to keep his nose in them for a very long time.

Not that he had a lot to distract him, aside from his own miserable thoughts. Hermione was going back and forth between Ron's compartment and Harry's. Harry felt bad for how Ron's animosity was obviously tearing her apart, but what could he do? Ron hadn't even answered to his "hello" back on the platform, and he'd deliberately chosen to sit on the exact opposite end of the train as Harry: when Harry had boarded at the front-most entrance, Ron had dragged all of his things very deliberately towards the back of the train. He'd been holed up in the very back compartment with Neville and a sleeping Professor Lupin the entire ride.

Harry felt bad enough for Hermione for her having to march up and down the train all the time that he had encouraged her to just stay back there with Ron. Ron had evidently encouraged her to stay with him as well – or maybe he was just more fun – because she had spent very little time so far up with Harry.

According to her reports, Ron was spending his time munching away on a huge stack of biscuits, fudge and cakes. Hermione's analysis was that Ron was dealing with his loss by stuffing his face, and, happily enough, Ron's mum was dealing with _her_ loss by baking – a fortunate combination.

When Harry looked up from his Paraphysiology text, Hermione was just shoving the door open. "Poor Ron," she said, and Harry nodded empathetically. After three months of Ron's pretending that he didn't exist, Harry still wasn't finding it any harder to sympathize with his best friend.

Hermione sat down next to him and took his hand comfortingly. "What happened to – what happened in the Chamber wasn't your fault, Harry."

That was the same thing that she'd said every other time she'd come into Harry's lonely compartment. It didn't make him feel any better because he didn't blame himself for what happened in the Chamber – it was what he had done after he had already left the Chamber that caused him to lose sleep. _In_ the chamber he had been faced with a Dark Lord and a mammoth basilisk – or, more like, a basilisk that could swallow a mammoth whole. It would be absurd to think that he stood a chance against them, and, although his failure haunted him, he didn't think that it was his fault.

If only he hadn't given Dumbledore the diary, or if Dumbledore hadn't thought that destroying it was the only safe course of action.... The Weasleys would have the diary, would be able to talk to her, and would take comfort in it. And Ginny's soul wouldn't be destroyed by Harry's hand.

The counter-argument was a lot better, though. Harry could picture himself walking up to Mrs. Weasley, in McGonagall's office last year, and handing her the diary – what would he say? "Here's your daughter – don't forget to write!" Would they rather a dead daughter or a book daughter?

Even if they didn't mind having a bibliographic daughter, they wouldn't be able to tell her anything personal about themselves without risking being possessed. As much as Harry wanted to believe that Ginny would never possess one of her own family members, he couldn't risk it because he knew that if _he_ was trapped in a book with the soul of an angry basilisk for company for the rest of time, he'd do anything to get out. Anything. Could he really expect Ginny to be any better? Even if she was, there was still the risk that the basilisk could possess someone. So if the Weasleys did have the diary, and did write to it, they could tell it nothing more personal than what they read in the paper that morning – they couldn't even give their opinions on it safely. That would only hurt everyone, including Ginny, even more. It was better that they didn't have it, and if they didn't have it it was better if they didn't know it existed.

But in the end, no rationale was good enough for destroying an innocent girl's soul.

Hermione didn't know any of that, so she assumed that Harry was just beating himself up for failing to defeat a Dark Lord and his pet basilisk. And that was exactly what Ron was so angry about. Did he think that Harry hadn't tried, hadn't put his life on the line? As much as Harry hated himself for what he did, he knew that Ron was unaware of it and for that reason he didn't think that Ron was acting properly.

Quietly, in a tone that begged for and end to the conversation, he said, "I know."

The compartment door opened again and Draco Malfoy flounced in. "The word on the train is," he said, "that Weasley thinks you killed his sister, Potter. So tell me, how did it feel? Did you curse her, or just strangle her like a lazy house-elf?"

Hermione stood up with fire in her eyes. Harry stood, too, but spoke calmly. "You'll be wanting to go, Malfoy."

"Oh, sorry," he said, eying Hermione with some amusement as she struggled to pull her wand out of an unabligingly tight pocket. "I didn't realize I was interrupting a private moment. Was she about to – _what did you do!"_

The train lurched to a hard stop and they all tumbled over. Then the lights went out. People screamed all down the train.

"Yeah, I jinxed the whole train just for you, Malfoy," Harry sneered as he disentangled himself from Hermione's robes.

"Who's hand was that?"

"Oh, sorry --"

"That's my foot, you idiot --!"

"_Lumos!" _Harry's wand lip up, casting a flickering blue-green light. He pulled Malfoy to his feet as Hermione lit her own wandtip.

"That's better," she said, flushed and panting. Harry could see a cloud of fog drifting from her lips as she spoke.

"When did it get so cold?" he asked.

"We can't be in Hogsmeade yet – why have we stopped?"

"I've got better places to be," Malfoy sneered. He pushed his way out of the compartment – and then jumped right back in, face aghast. "There's something out there!"

"You get jumpy without your stooges around, don't you?" Harry said, pushing by him. He stepped out of the compartment to look around. By his wandlight, he made out a strange, floating, formless silhouette – it looked like a levitated mountain range. Then, all at once, he realized that it was several men in robes, floating slightly off the ground. They were amassing by the entrance, floating up the stairs and into the corridor, crowding it with a dozen figures.

"Some people are boarding," he hissed into the compartment. "They're – they're sort of hovering."

But he looked back at the people and realized that that wasn't true – they were no longer hovering, but floating, sort of soaring, straight towards him. He started shivering as they approached, and he jumped back into the compartment and slammed the door shut.

"What do they think they're doing?" Hermione wondered. "No one _boards_."

"It's the dementors," Malfoy said quietly.

Harry wasn't listening, however. He was feeling colder and colder all the time, and he sat down and bundled himself up.

The door opened. Several of the figures stood in the doorway– they still just looked like silhouettes, even as close as they were – but then they looked like nothing at all, because Harry's field of vision was overcome by a dizzying white haze through which no sight could be seen, no idea could be thought --

Through the fog a glisteningly slimy, scabbed, decayed hand reached out to him and caressed his jaw --

Then Harry could hear – a man was shouting. "Take Harry and go!"

Some glass shattered – there was a bang – something slammed against a wall and shook the whole house --

He was in a house, in a bedroom, in a crib. By the moonlight he watched as someone with bright green eyes, wide in terror, burst in. Broomsticks flew about on the wall paper and the planets of the kaleidoscope spun about lazily and the woman slammed the door shut and came to him.

"I love you, Harry," she whispered, kissing his face all over – he giggled for her, but he was confused and scared.

The door blew off the hinges and broke something and Harry was showered in glass and debris and a man said, "Step aside."

He was a handsome man, well groomed and finely dressed in soft-looking gray robes – but his eyes were completely red and shone so brightly that they seemed to cast his whole face in a wicked glow.

"Step aside," he said. His voice was calm and his English was as perfect as the Queen's.

"Please, not Harry! Take me instead!"

He chuckled good-naturedly and said, "Step aside, you silly girl."

"Please, not Harry, please, take me instead, please --!"

A flash of green light filled the room. Harry shut his eyes tight, but the light was so intense that it seemed to burn his eyes even when they were shut. He opened them again just as the woman fell with a soft _thump_.

"A baby... so hard to believe that prophecy now, seeing your fat little face. No matter.... _Avada Kedavra!"_

Another blinding light – then, the most horrible sound Harry could imagine filled his ears, a scream of the most terrible agony.

* * *

_This is it,_ Voldemort thought.

A Care of Magical Creatures class, with Voldemort's old friend, Rubeus Hagrid, at the helm. Predictably, it was terrible. No one volunteered to approach the hippogryffs, and, when Hagrid resorted to bribery and threats, the first student who did approach one of the beasts, a bushy-haired girl, was rejected. The hippogryff refused to bow to her.

A redheaded boy had more luck with his chestnut beast. It allowed him to pat its back and stroke its neck. After that boy's success, some students volunteered when Hagrid offered them ten points to do so.

Then, after everyone was getting in to it, a boy was slashed by his beast in the arm, spilling blood all over the grass. Hagrid hefted the child up and sprinted off to the castle.

The class meandered behind him – one boy, a brick-faced Slytherin, dallied, and Voldemort latched on to him and dove into his brain like a parasite.

He followed his classmates up to the castle, unable to contain his dark smile. If nothing else, this was worth it just to feel himself in a human body again.

But his plan was a miserable failure. As soon as he crossed into the entrance hall, he was violently thrown from his body – the boy he'd left went into spasms, and he raced away back into the forest.

Apparently, Dumbledore had learned his lesson from two years ago: powerful anti-possession wards were on the castle, now.

* * *

When Harry woke up he was instantly alert, but didn't open his eyes. He lay there for a long moment, committing every second of the dream to his memory. He knew instinctively that it hadn't been a dream at all, but a memory. He went over it a dozen times, memorizing everything he had heard and seen, before he opened his eyes.

He was laying in a bed in the hospital wing, the curtain blocking him from the view of any nosy patients or visitors. His bedside table was had a tall stack of chocolates and little notes, and his robes were neatly ironed and folded on a chair.

_I should have a bed on reserve here_, he thought to himself as he sat up. _Why were those dementors on the train?_

He munched on a piece of milk chocolate and went through all of the little notes on his table. None of them had anything useful to say – they were all along the lines of "Get well soon!" without specifying what he had to get well from or why; all the notes attached to chocolates just said things like "from Neville."

He heard a bed creak and listened to feet pacing around impatiently and decided it was time to put his robes on.

Just as he was tying up the front of his robe, a door opened and the pacing stopped.

"Well?" came a familiar drawl. Draco Malfoy at his most pompous.

"You're cured, Mr. Malfoy. I can't give you anything, sling or no."

"Hmm.... I quite understand, Madam. Thank you."

Harry heard Malfoy walk across the the infirmary and open the doors – he caught a snatch of what Malfoy was saying to someone who had evidently been waiting for him: "She gave me something for the pain --" He was cut off as the door closed behind him.

"And how are you feeling, Mr. Potter?" Madam Pomfrey called from outside his curtained area. He pulled the barrier back and gave her a weak smile.

"I feel fine. How long have I --?"

"You missed two days of school, Mr. Potter. Are you dizzy?"

"No, Madam."

"Nauseous?"

"No."

"Head ache? Does your chest feel under pressure? Difficulty breathing? Vision and hearing okay?" Harry answered appropriately and she sighed. "Well, I guess I can't keep you any longer, although I'd like to."

"Er – thank you?"

"I mean to observe your condition, Mr. Potter," she said, suppressing a smile.

"Oh, right. Well.... Could I get a bag or something?" he gestured at the stack of chocolates and notes.

* * *

"Can you believe that they actually searched your trunk, Harry?" Hermione said over her shepherd's pie that evening. "Like they thought you'd be smuggling Sirius Black into the castle --"

"Is that who they were looking for?"

"I don't know why Black would be trying to get in here, but Dumbledore seems to agree with the dementors being around --"

"I bet he's trying to do me in," Harry said. His voice was sullen, verging on petulant. "Does it have to be like this every year? Maybe I should transfer."

Hermione grinned wryly. "Learn some French and go to Beauxbatons --"

"French!" he grimaced.

"French isn't bad – I speak a bit, you know."

"You would."

"If you prefer Russian, there's always Durmstrang."

"'Durmstrang'? That sounds German."

"It's confusing."

"Know anyone who speaks German?"

"Russian, you mean, and no I don't."

"I wouldn't mind Russian...."

"I was only kidding!"

"You mean it _is _German?"

"No! I was kidding about you going to Durmstrang!"

"McGonagall just finished eating," he said abruptly, and marched up to the staff table while still chewing a bit of the shepherd's pie. He swallowed and said, "Professor."

"Yes, Mr. Potter? How are you recovering?"

He made a face. "Well, thank you. I wanted to talk to you about changing classes. I meant to on the first day...."

"Perfectly understandable. What did you want to change?"

He frowned. Hermione had told him that Hagrid had made the new Care of Magical Creatures Professor and that Malfoy was causing all sorts of trouble in class. He didn't want to drop it, but to continue it would mean an insane workload and a class with Ron. But he bit the bullet and told his Head of House, "I wanted to drop Divination and pick up Arithmancy and Paraphysiology."

She smiled briefly at him. "Very wise, Mr. Potter. I'll see to it. I trust Ms. Granger will bring you up to date?"

"Yes, Professor."

When he returned to the table, he told Hermione, "I couldn't bring myself to drop Hagrid."

"Well, you'll have to actually study this year, that's for sure."

"I always study!"

"The last two years all you and Ron ever did was play exploding snap and chess while I was working."

Harry's mood soured instantly. "Well, I won't be as distracted this time 'round, I imagine."

Hermione hastened to change the subject. "Did I tell you about what happened to Malfoy?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Well, did I tell you about Lupin?"

"Er – no. What happened?"

"He's _amazing!_"

"You mean like Lockhart?"

"Harry." Oliver Wood was suddenly standing behind Harry, grasping his shoulder and grinning. "Find you well, I hope? Listen, we're going to win the Cup this year – we're going to practice three nights a week starting tomorrow night. No one else will be starting for another month because they've all got to have tryouts this year."

"Oliver, I've been practicing a lot over the summer. I've got some new moves to show you."

Oliver grinned so widely that his eyes disappeared under folds of eyelids. "Excellent."

When he was gone, Harry leaned in close to Hermione and whispered, "So, what happened after I passed out?"

Hermione paled. They'd been dodging around the topic all through dinner. Reluctantly, she said, "We dragged you back into the compartment, and closed the door on them. Malfoy said his father had told him they'd be coming, but he hadn't thought they'd be so bad. He was shivering, mind, and rather green. Then they came into the compartment and started going through our trunks. Malfoy passed out. You were sort of jerking all around like you were in a seizure or something; it was really scary. Maybe six of them came into the compartment, and more were right outside the door. It was packed in there. And then I passed out too. I woke up before Malfoy – he was out for hours. By that time we were moving again. I got a prefect to get help for you two, and he called in Professor Lupin, and he suggested chocolate when you woke up."

"Chocolate?" Harry snorted. It sounded like they had another miserable Defense teacher, if the best way he could think of to fight dementors was to eat some chocolate. Harry hadn't seen the man, but he figured that Hermione probably only liked him because of how he looked, just like Lockhart last year. Three worthless Defense teachers in a row was more than he could afford to bear, especially now that Riddle and Black were on the loose, doing who knows what. It was time for him to do something about it himself.

He excused himself curtly and fairly ran off to the library, trying to beat its closing in a few short hours, and hastily found a book on Aurors. He copied from the book a short list of spells that the Aurors found particularly useful – the Stunning Spell, the Reductor Curse, the Shield Charm, and so on, and then checked out a book with a sixty-page section on the Stunning Spell.

Harry was used to being active night and day, so when he sneaked out of the Common Room at around nine, he was able to practice Stunning for hours before he got tired, by the end of which he was only able to produce a pretty pathetic spurt of reddish sparks. Around midnight, he called it quits even though he was far from satisfied.

_I tried to be sorta curt about the whole Diagon Alley part, but it's so easy to write that I wrote more than I'd wanted. I know no one likes a long Diagon Alley scene, but at least I didn't have Harry bag a magical trunk or a pet raven...._

_How do wizards watch Quidditch matches? I've wondered that for a while. I thought they might watch it through the floo, but I decided that a flat and green show wasn't something wizards would go for. So I invented the Quidditch table you see here. I think it's original, so please tell me if it's not. I don't want to rip off some story that I half-remember from years ago. Does it become harder to write really original fanfiction after you've read ten thousand fics?_

_I don't want to make this a Hermione ship: I'm trying a bit to make her less like my own girlfriend so that I won't end up pushing Harry at her._

_This chap has no Tom, but brings old Voldemort into the fold for the first time._

_General question: how am I doing? I've not written any fiction before, really._

_Nordfjord_


	4. A Break In

* * * **Chapter 4: A Break-In** * * *

Classes began for Harry the following morning, but he was dead tired. During Professor McGonagall's lecture on elemental Transfigurative theory, his eyes drooped and he yawned repeatedly. As he stumbled out of the classroom, she called him back.

"Mr. Potter, how did you sleep last night?"

"Oh, er – well, Professor?"

She raised a thin eyebrow and pursed her lips. "Indeed. I suggest you head to Madame Pomfrey and get yourself a Sleeping Draught."

"Oh. Yes, Professor. Thank you."

When Harry had safely made it out of the room, he started cursing furiously. Did McGonagall think he was having nightmares? How could Harry possibly learn Defense if he was on Sleeping Draughts? She was fretting over him like Mrs. Weasley – but that train of thought made Harry depressed instead of angry, so he morosely hurried off to the hospital wing. After all, it wouldn't do to miss his first Arithmancy class, would it?

When he arrived, she was busily treating a girl for an early-season cold. "Take this Pepper-Up for drowsiness and cough, Ms. Fletchy. And this will clear your sinuses...."

Pepper-Up potions, of course. There were two ways to be more energized: sleep more, or take a stimulant. Pepper-Up wasn't very good for keeping you up, but Harry was aware from his readings that it didn't have the negative side-effects of caffeine – it wasn't addictive, you didn't just crash after a few hours, and it didn't get less effective over time. On the other hand, it was more expensive and time-consuming to make by far.

He took the bottle of Sleep from the nurse and stuffed it carelessly into his bag, then hurried off to Arithmancy, which was way up on the sixth floor. He arrived, panting, not five seconds before he would have been late, and collapsed heavily on the bench next to Hermione.

He and Hermione and Parvati Patil were the only Gryffindors there. There were just two Hufflepuffs, also: Susan Bones and Ernie MacMillan, who was probably Harry's third-least-favorite person at Hogwarts, after Snape and Malfoy. Speaking of which, several Slytherins were in the Runes classroom, although Harry didn't know any of them by name except big, meaty Crabbe. All of the Ravenclaws seemed to be present, but, Harry realized suddenly, he didn't know _any_ Ravenclaws at all by name, having never shared a class with Ravenclaw.

He was somewhat energized by his run, and listened as attentively as possible to the teacher, Professor Stanton Vector, give her rather ranting lecture.

"We're going to start things off with the most simple shapes: point, line, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, et cetera. Sort of as a by-way for learning Greek, this class has a lot of funny words to learn, yes indeed! Triangles have three sides, three inner angles, one plane in two dimensions. Yes, yes!

"Some say triangles are good luck, and get wallpaper with triangles and doors shaped like triangles. Then again, some people say they're bad luck, and will go out of their way to never walk a path that forms a triangle. I, myself, believe a bit of both!: I have this triangle necklace, you see --" he pulled out of his shirt a funny little gold triangle, with what appeared to be an eye in the center. It looked oddly familiar to Harry. Professor Vector continued, "and my shoes, I cut little triangles in them so I always walk on triangles. _On the other hand!_" he suddenly shouted, "I would never date someone with a triangular nose. Very bad luck, indeed!

"Where _are_ those handouts? Ah! Please pass these around, Mr. Stipple. Oh, yes? Sorry, Mr. Eston, I have a Stipple in my fourth year class. Thank you. Please call me Stanton, class, or Stanley or Stan; my father was _Professor Vector_. Well, actually, he wasn't a Professor, but.... Er – as you see on your handout... please take out a chalk and practice some triangles on your slate, thank you! Yes, again, do it a few times, then do a nice square.... nice and sharp! I don't want any roundness! Oh, _quite_ good, Stipple, have you drawn triangles before?"

"That was fascinating," Hermione said enthusiastically as they all filed out of the class. Harry couldn't see what she was so excited about: all they had done was draw blocky letters on slates the whole class. For homework, they'd been assigned two feet on the properties of the numbers between zero and ten, due Friday. Harry was looking forward to more dull work, and rather wondered if Divination would have been more fun.

"Oh, yes! Did you hear Stan – Professor Vector, I mean – say that we'd start doing stone etches next week?"

Harry perked up. "Er – no. I wasn't really listening."

Hermione scoffed superiorly at him. "Well, I _always_ listen in class --"

"I know. I've seen you taking notes in _History_ before."

"-- and I think Arithmancy is going to be _very_ interesting, even if the teacher is a bit – odd. Care of Magical Creatures was good, too, you know: we have it again tomorrow."

"And what's after lunch today?"

Hermione grimaced. "Potions."

The Great Hall was bright, the sky a deep blue with no clouds at all. Harry took some soup and a sandwich and nibbled idly. The rest of the Gryffindor third years came not long later from Divination, which was apparently located way up in the north tower. Ron sat deliberately far away from Harry, and Harry glowered at him.

"He's starting to get on my nerves, you know...."

"What? Ron? He's just upset, Harry!"

Harry pulled a nasty face. "Ron just had to sit back with Lockhart... he didn't see the basilisk, he wasn't spelled by Voldemort.... What business does he have thinking I didn't try hard enough?"

Hermione tried to pat his hand, but he pulled his away. She said, "Ron's just miserable. He lost his sister, Harry. And I think he blames himself for it –"

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us. I bet when he saw that cave-in he was relieved --!"

Hermione gave him a scathing look. "_Don't_ say that."

"He was. He was ridiculously slow to clear it. I was in there more than an hour, you know. If he's mad at his own pathetic self, he shouldn't take it out on me, that's all."

"I _agree_ that he's being stupid, Harry. That's why I'm with you and not him right now. But don't be so cruel."

Potions was less miserable than it had ever been before. Harry and Hermione were the first pair done with their Blood-Thinning Brew, beating even the best Slytherins, and it came out absolutely perfect. Snape gave them eighty percent.

"That's the best mark I've ever got in that class," Harry laughed as they walked out of the class. One good thing – maybe the only good thing – about Snape was that he let you leave when your brewing was done. Harry had never finished a potion early before, and had always just had to sit and glare at the early-departing Slytherins. "Did you see the look he gave me when I answered his questions?"

"He deducted points from you for getting them _right_, Harry --"

"Yeah. Is that what it feels like to be you in that class?"

She sighed, but smiled. "You _did_ practice your potions over the summer, didn't you? You're a lot better now."

"You're a boomslang skin-cutting machine, Hermione."

"Well – I've had practice," she said sneakily.

Harry sported her a grin. "You've got Muggle Studies up next, right? Meet in in the Common Room, then – I'm going to the bathroom --" He jogged off. He went to the bathroom, sure enough – the girl's room on the third floor, Myrtle's haunted lav, and quickly locked himself into a stall and enlarged his cauldron.

"Harry?" came an amazed voice. He looked down, and there was Myrtle's head, sitting in the toilet bowl. "What brings you here?"

"Potion," he said shortly, but, on seeing how that made her face wrinkle up into a hurt expression, added, "and I wanted to see you, of course, Myrtle."

Her eyes lit up. "I didn't think you'd ever come and visit me again," she said. Neither did Harry, but Myrtle's room was definitely the best place to secretly brew a Ministry-controlled potion in the whole school.

"Of course, Myrtle. We're friends, right? Can you get out of there?"

Her face turned a deeper shade of blue in an ectoplasmic blush as she realized herself. She flew immediately out of the bowl, splashing Harry's shoes a bit.

"Thanks," he said, and lit a water-proof fire in the metal toilet bowl. He stuck his cauldron in place on top of it, making sure there was an airway, and then went to the tap with a tall beaker. "How have you been?" he asked idly as he filled the beaker with water.

"Poor. But after you've been brutally murdered, what's one or two bad days?"

Harry nodded sagely. "Peeves treating you all right?" he asked, and she grimaced. Walking back to the stall, he offered emptily, "I could ask Dumbledore to do something. He owes me a couple favors by now."

The way she beamed and her eyes watered reminded Harry sharply of Dobby the house-elf. "_You'd do __that?_"

Harry shrugged and grunted affirmatively as he poured the water into the cauldron and started gutting his tarantulas. "Sure, why not?" he said, carelessly flinging a spoonful of spider guts onto the floor. Six tarantulas swiftly became empty, crunchy, hairy husks, and he ground them up. He poured them into a large dry-ingredients bowl, to which he then added grasshopper legs and cinnamon.

The Pepper-Up potion, a viscous mauve goo that bubbled even when cold, was finished in two hours. Another half hour after that, he'd washed up all of his supplies and packed everything away. It was only at that time that he realized that Myrtle wasn't just being quiet – she was gone. He shrugged and made his way up to the Common Room.

That night, after he did his homework and Quidditch practice, he was so exhausted that he could barely even get up off his chair in the Common Room. Somehow, with Neville's help, he managed to make it up the stairs to the dormitory – where he sipped a teaspoon of the Pepper-Up Potion and felt absolutely revitalized. He hid behind his bed curtains until he was sure all the other boys were asleep, then sneaked out again.

* * *

Tom was an endless supply of charms. Smokeless campfires, illusions and anti-dementor wards were all cake to him. Sirius was better at at least one thing: to took Tom _ages_ to master the Animagus transformation, which made the first month and a half a constant struggle. Tom got it eventually, transforming into a rather runty goshawk at will, and since then it had been much easier to evade the dementors.

Sirius didn't ever ask his companion much about himself, although he was happy to tell his own life story. He was acute enough to know when someone wanted to keep to themselves, and congenial enough to oblige. He was aware that the kid was on the run from the Ministry, but for what he had no idea and didn't plan on asking. He knew that the kid wasn't nearly as dangerous as he himself was, however, by the fact that the kid didn't have his mug on a single _WANTED_ poster in Hogsmeade.

What he did know was that Tom knew Harry in a casual sort of way, and was able to give third- or fourth-hand accounts of some of Harry's exploits at Hogwarts. That was enough for Sirius to take to the charming young man, who was, after all, much better company than the trees and monsters of the Forbidden Forest.

Whatever Tom's reasons were, he was willing to help Sirius try to capture Peter Pettigrew, and that was a great favor, possibly the best favor anyone had ever given Sirius, and enough by far to excuse the boy's secretiveness. It was nice just to have another living soul that believed he was innocent.

The Forbidden Forest was an odd place to meet a new friend, but, Sirius supposed, it was one of the few places so magical that it was impossible to detect people within; one of the few places so dangerous that no Auror would willfully enter into. If you stayed near enough to the unicorns, there was even a bit of protection from the constantly patrolling dementors. Failing that, the boy could cast a pretty amazing Patronus Charm.

* * *

As time went on, Tom began wondering more and more about his aches. First it was just his head, but pretty soon his whole body was in constant agony. It was no sickness he had ever heard of – although in the Forbidden Forest, there was bound to exist strange magical parasites that no one had ever encountered elsewhere.

No herb or spell helped. All of his diagnostic spells came bag negative. There was no reason for this ache, this terrrible pain over his whole body – and yet...

Tom was a creature the likes of which had never before existed. No Horcrux had ever come into a body, as he had invented the magic that makes it possible himself.

As he had possessed Ginny Weasley again and again, he noticed that he took a bit of her magic away with him each time he went into her mind. He spent Ginny's whole spring term trying to make a spell that would capitalize on the effect. In the end, he had come up with _Arripavenefic, _a charm which acted by first separating the magic from the soul, and then distributing the two essences into separate bodies – the magic into Tom, the soul into some inanimate object. A soul could only contain a certain amount of magic, so the spell could not be used to enlarge one's magical reservoir significantly. However, for a being like Tom, _Arripavenefic _allowed him to fill up his depleted magical reserve. The charm was Tom's invention, made possible only by the ability of possession that Voldemort had imbued him with. The strangeness of Voldemort's actions meant that Tom's circumstances were likely unique in all of remembered history.

Which presented Tom with a few problems. His aches were also unique: the fact that none of his diagnostic spells came out positive implied that he had no known ailment. The only explanation was that it had to do with his unique nature.

What he feared was that what he was feeling was himself collapsing. What if he was unique because he went against the laws of magic merely by existing? What if he was just not meant to be?

The pain got worse and worse, and he worried. When Tom was worried, only one thing made him feel better, so he went to research.

* * *

Harry got himself into a routine over the following weeks. Each morning, he would wake himself up with a Pepper-Up Potion, then go to classes and meals all day. After homework or Quidditch or both in the evenings, he would down some more Pepper-Up Potion and find somewhere to practice Defensive magic. It turned out that Lupin wasn't as hopeless as Harry had expected him to be, but he was focusing on dark creatures like Red Caps and hinkypunks rather than on the curses, counter-curses and shields that Harry was interested in. Dark creatures required special spells and techniques to deal with, however, so they had to be taught on a creature-by-creature basis. Unlike wizards, the Reductor Curse and Stunning Spell wouldn't work on most dark creatures. It wasn't that Harry didn't understand the importance of learning how to deal with common dark creatures, it was just that it was much easier to see himself being attacked by dark wizards than hinkypunks. For that reason, he continued to practice his curses every night.

Halloween came with the first visit to Hogsmeade. Harry saved Hermione the trouble of deciding whether to go with him or Ron by saying that he wasn't interested. Weekends meant only one thing to Harry: extra time to study curses. So, although he went to all the trouble of balding Aunt Marge to get his permission slip signed, he stayed in the castle, hiding this time in the chamber under the third floor corridor, in the room that had once been filled with Devil's Snare, where he'd first come face-to-back-of-the-head with Voldemort. He took with him a huge pile of apples, oranges, bread with butter, and chicken legs, as well as dozens of books, so he didn't come out of his hidey-hole until well after the feast.

Although he'd done pretty much the same thing every other weekend, he should have realized that Harry Potter couldn't just go missing and not have anyone notice. When he emerged from the chamber under the third floor corridor on the right-hand side, he was immediately seized by the shoulder by Professor McGonagall.

"Mr. Potter!" she shouted. Her eyes were frantic, furious... and relieved? She shouted, "_I've found him! I'VE GOT POTTER!_" and Harry heard people running towards them from all directions.

"Wh – what's going on?" he asked. Teachers were coming up from every direction, faces sweaty but relieved.

"There's been a break-in," she said. He air was deeply sober. "Sirius Black an an unidentified accomplice entered the castle. They gained entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room and they went into your dorm room, Mr. Potter."

Harry stared at her, dumbstruck. What if he had left the chamber a bit earlier, and had bumped right into Black and Riddle as they made their escape? He would be dead for sure, defensive spells or no.

He allowed her to lead him into the Great Hall, where all of the other students were gathered.

* * *

Harry wasn't the only one sneaking about the dark and mysterious parts of the castle that day. Tom had sneaked in, as he had many times over the last month, to the Chamber of Secrets through one of its many, many entrances hidden in the forest.

Usually, the pain lessened when he went into the Chamber. He attributed it to the calming nature of the place. Even without the company of the old snake, the Chamber felt more like home than anywhere else in the world to Tom. He would sit amongst little wooden furnishings, spelled by Salazar Slytherin himself to last for all of time, reading one of Slytherin's ancient Latin texts, relaxing and calming down in a way in which he'd never been able to do in the forest, and his ache would vanish.

This time, the Chamber made his ache worse.

Instead of relaxing, he was pacing up and down, jumping at every shadow cast by the flickering candles, feeling burning, aching agony torment his body.

Was this it? Was he to collapse, here and now, in this old dwelling of snakes, the place of his birth just down the hall?

As the pain reached the point at which he could no longer bare it, something on the wall caught his eye. A shadow – cast by what?

He turned around. A huge snake, some sort of python or boa, hissed cruelly at him. All about the snake floated a strange darkness, like a thick black fog, and if he looked too close at that fog, it burned his eyes.

"Hello, Tom," an unseen voice spoke. It was not the snake, it was not Parseltongue, but it was hissing and wicked. Tom's wand was in his hand in that very second, and he didn't think a single thought before he opened his mouth and cried out the first spell that came upon his mind: "_Arripanimam!_"

_Arripanimam_ was unlike his earlier creation, _arripavenefic,_ because it did not separate the soul from the magic, did not put them into different bodies. It was the spell he'd created to absorb the Horcrux within the little silver Gaunt signet ring. Even as he said the words, and waved his wand, his mind told him that he was a fool! A spell like that was not to be used on a plain snake! But another part of his mind suspected something else.

The ache had not been his body collapsing. It had been his soul – his two souls? -- trying to escape from his body and rejoin their original owner. Today, now, he was facing Voldemort – a disembodied fog, but also a man who held a terrible power over Tom.

Scaly green cords flew out of his palms and connected them with the snake's eyes. His wand clattered to the ground – he hoped that Voldemort was still phantasmal enough not to be able to pick it up – and he felt the surge of power, knowledge and spirit.

A man could only hold a certain volume of magic – many dark wizards of old had turned themselves into Squibs by trying to imbue themselves with more magic than they could contain. When Tom had absorbed the Ring-Horcrux, he had emptied his magical reservoir as quickly as he was filling it up by levitating things, cutting things, and causing fires and explosions on the near-by Riddle Manor.

Now, instead, he emptied his magic upon Voldemort in a wave of pure destructive force.

But Voldemort was ready for that. When Tom eventually collapsed from exhaustion right there in the Chamber, Voldemort fled, disembodied but more powerful than he'd been in a very long time. He'd even managed to prevent most of Nagini's knowledge from entering into Tom.

Tom had gained only a few scraps of wisdom along with the soul. And Voldemort was quite happy to surrender the soul.

Tom awoke in the old study room of the Chamber of Secrets many hours later, and began perusing his knowledge. It wasn't much. In fact, it was next to nothing. But, among that next-to-nothing, was something that was definitely something. The location of the Diadem. And – so nearby!

* * *

That evening, Sirius was beginning to worry about his companion. Tom had been gone for nearly a day. Fifteen hours ago, early in the morning, Tom had wandered off on one of his frequent "studying trips." Sirius was used to these and used to not being told where exactly Tom was actually going, so he only nodded and stirred the beans.

Not long after Sirius had decided not to save any dinner (hinkypunk kabobs) for him, Tom bust out of the thistles, a wild look in his eyes.

"Let's go tonight, Sirius. It's Hallowe'en. They'll all be at a feast. Let's go!"

* * *

The five long tables had been pushed aside, the cleared space covered with hundreds of sleeping bags with hundreds of heads poking out. Each head perked up as Harry and Professor McGonagall entered the hall, craning to get a better look at Harry. Conversations broke out all over the vast room.

A hoarse voice called his name, and he saw Hermione, red-eyed, standing above the purple sea of sleeping bags, waving her arms. He walked over to her purposefully, trying not to acknowledge the whispering, staring mob laying at his ankles, and she jogged to meet him and gave him a tight hug.

"We thought...." But whatever they'd thought was too horrible for her say, because she just sobbed and squeezed him all the tighter.

Professor McGonagall spoke to Percy and the Head Girl in hushed tones for a moment, then left the hall.

Hermione led Harry back to the Gryffindor edge of the hall – for most of the students had chosen to lay in the place where their table had been – and Ron stood up and shook Harry's hand tightly and apologized to him for being such an ass for the last few months. Harry told him that there was nothing to forgive, and the three huddled together to hold a whispered conversation.

"Harry," Ron said. "Fred and George told me that they overheard my parents talking – they reckon Black's after you. I should have told you sooner, but I --"

He paused, and Harry wondered, _but what? Did you want to see me dead?_

But Ron said, "But I've been too ashamed to talk to you."

"What --?"

"Because I couldn't do anything back in the Chamber. I'm sorry, Harry."

* * *

The next morning, the whole story surfaced. Black had broken into Harry's dorm room, and, despite the efforts of the House-Elves, it was evident that he'd torn the place up. Ron's bed, in particular, had been slashed from curtain to box spring with a knife. Black must have terrified poor old Scabbers, who had gone missing.

In addition, several portraits had seen a youth (who Harry instantly realized was Tom Riddle) skulking around up on the sixth floor.

Professor McGonagall wasted no time in telling Harry that he was to remain in the Gryffindor tower after curfew on pain of expulsion.

Fred and George had other ideas, and Harry a few days later found himself yanked into an empty classroom as he walked by.

"We heard about your problem, Harry," said Fred.

"McGonagall not letting you sneak about," George clarified.

"We've come to offer out assistance in the form..."

"Of this!" George exclaimed, spreading out a peace of old, wrinkled parchment on a desk. George worked to smooth it out while Fred grinned expectantly at Harry.

"Er --?"

"It's a map!" George said.

Harry looked at it more closely – it was entirely blank. He said, "A map of what, purgatory?"

Fred screwed up his face in a mockery of sophistication, lifting his nose into the air and peering down at Harry imperiously. He said, "Regarday-voo, monsyor!"

"Zees is no ordinary meah parch-_mont_, monsyor."

Fred whipped his wand out and rapped it against the parchment. He said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

An inky spiderweb spread over the crumpled old parchment, slowly resolving into what was unmistakably a map -- "Hogwarts!" Harry exclaimed.

But that was hardly the most amazing part. Hundreds of little dots were scattered all over the parchment, each one with a little name scribbled in minute letters: Albus Dumbledore was in a sixth floor lavatory stall; Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater were very close together in a ground-floor broom closet. The map almost gave too much information.

"Woah."

The twins grinned and said, "Wee, wee!" and told him how to deactivate it. Then they walked out of the classroom with satisfied expressions on their faces.

That night, Harry began again sneaking out to practice Defense. The risk of meeting Black and Riddle in the halls of Hogwarts was remote enough to be worth the risk, especially with the map in his hands.

After a time, he stopped sleeping altogether. Instead of taking a Pepper-Up in the evening to keep him awake and one in the morning to wake him up after a few hours of sleep, he took three or four or five doses sporadically throughout the day. It went against everything he was learning in Paraphysiology, but he deemed it necessary: it would be impossible to deny that he wasn't progressing much more rapidly now. He'd long ago mastered the Stunning Spell and the Shielding Charm, the two essential spells that all fifth-years were expected to know, and had progressed to the Reductor Curse and the Confunding Charm. He worked so long and so hard that his wand-arm was soon constantly burning to the marrow.

Three Thursdays later, if he had remembered that his first Quidditch game was the next day, he might have gotten some sleep.


	5. He's Back

* * * **Chapter 5: He's Back** * * *

The Quidditch match went terribly. The weather had been abysmal, and by the time the dementors got to the field, Harry was about ready to fall off his broom from exhaustion in any case. Pepper-Up Potions were a lot better than caffeine or speed, but were not a substitute for sleep.

He was grateful, more than anything, that he had a better excuse for falling off of the Nimbus than that he was tired. It saved him some face in front of his teammates.

They had lost the match, but the Gryffindor Chasers were the best in the school, so the defeat had not been by much. They would be able to make it up against Slytherin and Ravenclaw, assuming that Harry thought to sleep before those matches.

As he lay in his hospital bed, Nimbus laying alongside him, he was more worried about the dementors themselves than the Quidditch Cup. There were hundreds of the things now, at least one for every student, always patrolling the grounds and the village and the forest and, every once in a while, the corridors and courtyards of the castle itself. Every time Harry walked by one, he felt faint. He was forced more than once to use Ron as a crutch as the dementors floated by, their dark hoods concealing the eyes that Harry knew were staring deep into his own. He felt like he'd been frozen from the marrow out whenever this happened.

The dementors were completely ineffectual as well: they had allowed two men to break in and muck about on Hallowe'en. It made him furious to think that the Ministry or Dumbledore or whoever was in charge of them thought that they hadn't worked simply because there hadn't been enough of them. How many had been in Azkaban? It should have been evident to anyone that Black had found a way to bypass the dementors, so how could they possibly justify unleashing more and more and more of the things upon the school?

The hospital wing was constantly full of people complaining of nausea and dizziness and blurry vision. His Paraphysiology instructors had taught them all how to cure patients with the symptoms, but Harry resolved to learn a more effective way of combating them than Professor R. J. Lupin and the Healers' suggested chocolate.

He piped up in his Paraphysiology class, a few days after his fall from the broomstick, "But, sir, isn't there a way to prevent the dementors from having such an effect?"

The instructor today was a stout little woman named Healer Egret Beckett. Out of the several healers that came around for lessons, Beckett, who primarily taught about herbal remedies, was Harry's least favorite: she was condescending and spiteful, and she assigned pointless homework. She told him, "Yes. Nothing that a third-year would be able to do, though," and continued with her lecture on chocolates.

The library was very forthcoming about dementors, and it didn't take Harry long to find exactly what he sought: the Patronus Charm.

Managing to pull it off was another thing.

Each night (for just a few hours: he was sleeping again now), Harry would sneak into some secluded alcove of the castle, map in hand, invisibility cloak on back, and attempt the spell. Each time, he did the exact wand movement, each swish perfected to within a millimeter of distance and a minute of angle. Each time, throat clear and watered, he would enunciate the spell pristinely. Each time, he thought back on when he'd found out he was a wizard, or when he'd won the House Cup first year. Each time, he could produce no more than a fog, when, if he had done it correctly, a silvery beast was supposed to erupt from his wand.

Hermione and Ron and the team had told him that Dumbledore had shot something silver at the dementors, back on the Quidditch pitch, which had caused them to disperse. Something solid had come out of Dumbledore's wand, there was no doubt. Did it take, then, someone as powerful as Dumbledore to cast the Patronus Charm? Was it a ridiculous post-post-N.E.W.T. spell that only the greatest wizards in the world could master? Or was Harry just very bad at it?

Or did he have no adequate memory? He wondered what Dumbledore had thought of when he had cast the spell. Maybe he thought back to when he'd discovered the uses of dragon blood, or when he had been made a member of the wizengamot. Perhaps he'd been married and he thought of his wife.

Harry's mental image of himself finding out he was a wizard was tempered by the presence of the Dursleys cowering in the corner, and the next thing he had learned about himself: that his parents had been killed by an evil sorcerer. When he thought of winning the House Cup in his first year, he couldn't help but remember what had happened the day before, when Ron and Harry had both been nearly killed.

After several weeks of daily practice, he progressed only from the shadow of a fog to a thick, hazy cloud, and he gave it up. He simply could not make it substantiate.

After weeks of fruitlessness with the Patronus Charm, returning again to things like the Blasting Curse and the Shielding Charm was a welcome respite, and Harry devoured those spells.

* * *

Sirius had let his target slip through his fingers. Peter Pettigrew had escaped, in rat form, through a crack in the wall.

Sirius had been terribly upset, and had run off almost before they could key their mirrors to eachother. That suited Tom, fine, however: he didn't want an audience.

Every inch he moved was a struggle. The Snake-Horcrux was so fiercely loyal... unlike the Ring, it wasn't content to let him control. It kept pushing him to do wild things – throw his soul into a rock, cast a curse on himself, or go look for Voldemort. Her personality was hard to resist, even with the combined mental force of Tom and the Ring-Horcrux.

Like Tom, she had been keenly aware, enchanted by Voldemort to be alert and awake and thoughtful, rather than dull and featureless like the Ring. Unlike Tom, she had taken a keen liking to her master – she had absolutely no resentment for him, because while Tom thought of Voldemort as one who had imprisoned him, she regarded him as the one who created her. She loved him.

His every step and breath and thought was upstream, against her raging spirit. He could not contain her and he could scarcely enforce his will. He had a few advantages: this body was his and had been created after his mental self-image. While Nagini could see herself as a snake or as a fifty-year-old Voldemort, she could not see herself as a teenager, which made it difficult for her to control the body. Also, the Ring's spirit supported Tom, and although Nagini had a powerful personality, she could not defeat them both; she made everything Tom did terribly difficult instead.

She was so powerfully against absorbing the Diadem that he could not. Tom was so worried that it would align itself with her or else create a third individuality in his mind that he did not _want_ to absorb it. So it sat in his sack, taunting him with the knowledge that could be gained....

Tom could not sleep. His fear was that if he allowed himself to drift into the calm waters of unconsciousness, Nagini's spirit would be free to take over. So he stayed in the torrent, keeping himself awake and alert with Pepper-Up Potions, unknowingly copying his cousin, and analyzed the tomes – as well as he could against Nagini's will – of Salazar Slytherin, looking for a spell to silence raging spirits without exorcising them.

"_Nothing!_" Tom screamed, kicking the ancient tomes that littered the ground. "Nothing! Useless!"

For all of Salazar Slytherin's wide range of interests, he had apparently not bothered himself to write a single word on silencing spirits. As Tom's frustration mounted, the Snake-Horcrux laughed in his head, mocking his attempts. _This body will be mine!_, he thought – but the thought came unbidden, like a foreign voice echoing around in his head. His wand snapped up, pointing itself at his face, and words tried to escape his throat --

He clamped his frustration closed and forced himself to calm, taking deep, steady breaths. By-and-by, the wand lowered to his side, and he signed.

Slytherin had no advice. Therefore, he had to look elsewhere.

Immediately, his thoughts leaped to the Hogwarts library. But, close as it was, it was out of reach. Even down in the Chamber of Secrets, below the deepest depths of the lake, he could still feel the dementors above, floating along the water, searching. There were so many of them, now: he'd had to vacate the forest, because even his Animagus form was no longer sufficient to hide from the things for long periods of time. He only went up to find deer or possums to eat.

The Central Wizards' Archive was tempting – there was a very large branch just in Hogsmeade – but it was extremely well-fortified, even when there weren't dementors patrolling the streets. He'd just have to find something else. In the meantime, he doubled back through all of Slytherin's hand-written tomes, searching for even the slightest, vague reference. He searched for weeks.

* * *

The small, groveling creature, begging to assist, and the dark, tiny thing that had laughed and laughed and said, "Bring to me my enemy from the old times...."

The tiny creature stood up on its haunches, and looked directly into the groveler's eyes – and its eyes were red, from lid to lid, with not a hint of white or pupil to be seen, and glowing with energy and a killing intent.

And then two boys woke up, screaming in pain.

One of them just clutched his head in agony, and then slowly drifted back into unconsciousness. The other one pulled himself out of his bed and took a mirror out of a dresser drawer. He said, "Sirius Black!"

A face appeared in the mirror, gaunt and pale, dark eyes made darker by their shadows. "Tom. It's been a while. How are you?"

Tom didn't answer. He said, "I know where your friend is going, Sirius."

* * *

The next night, Sirius crouched in a bush on the outskirts of the yard, waiting in absolute silence. The house was dark, with no lights on at all, even though it was only ten o'clock. It was in a Muggle neighborhood, and the owner had apparently gone all-out making it look Mugglish: electric Christmas lights were strung from the shingles already, although they were unlit. An ancient Toyota sat in the drive with two flats, looking like it hadn't been used in a century. A stack of unread Muggle newspapers lay on the porch, and plastic gnomes and flamingos were scattered all about the dusty yard. Someone had cast Silencing Charms on all the wind chimes.

For hours, he waited, the picture of patience in the frigid November air. Although his hair was gathering frost, he stayed perfectly still, not shivering and only very rarely blinking.

Then – _pop!_

A short human figure appeared on the street, then disappeared just as quickly. Sirius wasn't quite sure if he saw the rat fly up the yard or not.

There was a very long silence – and then a sudden cacophony of shouts and crashes and explosions – and then a shorter silence.

The front door opened, and three men came out. The oldest man was leading the way, floating gently on his back, unconsciousness, bound with ropes and a Petrifying Curse. The next man was the youngest, gay yellow hair bouncing as he stepped, a wide grin plastered across his face. His wand was on the man in front of him, apparently in control: every now and again he would give the wand a little flick, and the old man's head would start scraping across the dusty yard, or knock into the Toyota's tire.

The last man was squat and miserable. He flinched and jumped at every sound the birds made. He hunched over so much that he appeared to be trying to look behind him through his legs. He hugged himself in the cold, and shivered.

Sirius slowly took the wand out of his pocket – a fine length of ash that he'd taken from a poor old man. He wasn't proud of thieving, but he'd done it before and, after all, his life was at stake. He took careful aim, and shouted, "_STUPEFY!!_"

A bolt of red light issued out from his wand, and the man in the back of the line dropped like a sack of potatoes. The youngest man broke into a run, his quarry bouncing and tumbling on the yard in front of him, and then grabbed the other's hand and disappeared with an ear-splitting _crack_.

Sirius leaped out of his bush before the pair had even disappeared, and ran right up to the unconscious man. His wand was on the Stunned man's face in a flash, and a flash of blue light illuminated the entire neighborhood.

* * *

Voldemort laughed at the young man standing before him. He said, "You are not the one I send out for this job ... but, perhaps you are an even better candidate. Yes ... now, stir the brew, boy, I have such a treat in store for you...."

The young man sycophantically rushed to stir the enormous cauldron, which popped and sizzled and bubbled nastily.

"My Lord, my Lord," he said, working the enormous lead stirring rod. "I have dreamed of nothing but your return for all these many years...."

"Let it simmer, now... I will need you to follow these instructions, my servant so loyal."

"Yes, my Lord."

The young man read the instructions dutifully, and Voldemort watched him as he did so. The boy did not flinch or twitch in the slightest when he came upon the second step, which had caused Pettigrew to practically spasm. Instead, he grinned gleefully, and said, "I am glad to have this chance, which so many of your servants would die for, to help restore you, my Lord... I never thought that I, worthless Barty Crouch, would have such an opportunity...."

* * *

Harry woke up early the next morning, a Saturday and the last day before term ended, drenched in sweat, and could not get back to sleep even though he had gone to bed only four hours before. He took a long, hot shower and tried to rub his soreness away under the hot water. What a strange dream he had had last night – and a horrible one. The words of the spell still echoed in his mind: _Bones of the father – flesh of the servant – blood of the enemy. Renew your son – revive your master – resurrect your foe._ And the man, tall and skeletal, rising from the cauldron.

He hoped dearly that the dream was just that: a dream. He could not convince himself, however. It had been so real, the colors so bright, the words so sharp, the voices so distinct. If it was a dream, it was like no dream he had ever had before – except one. The dream from just one day before, when he had seen the hunched little man, and the red-eyed infant-beast, who had said, "Bring me my enemy."

This dream was almost like a sequel, with the _blood of the enemy_ being one of the key ingredients in the potion – the man not screaming, but staring, resigned and deeply sad, as his arm was sliced open and his blood was taken into a vial. Harry had never had a dream with a sequel before.

He toweled off, he decided to just put it out of his mind. It was already fading away from him, just like any other dream, fading into the abyss of thoughts forgotten and ideas lost.

He had awoken so early that he found himself forced to wait around in the Entrance Hall for the huge doors of the Great Hall to open up. When he started muttering disgruntledly about his hunger, a House-Elf appeared with a few slices of toast for him to hold him over, and he thanked the little creature profusely.

Although he was the first student to arrive for breakfast, he was not the first to leave. He stayed for a long time, eating plate after plate of eggs, black pudding, toast and waffles. Something about the Pepper-Up Potions made him very hungry all the time, and he had received a incredulous looks from Ron whenever they ate together, because each time he ate around twice as much as his taller friend. So, Harry was still there when the mail arrived, and he borrowed Hermione's paper from her, because she wanted to eat before she read it. The article on the front page leaped out at him so much that he nearly had a heart attack:

_BARTIMUS CROUCH MISSING_

_By Noreen Humdinger_

_After the Head of the Department for International Cooperation did not report for work this morning, nor respond to floo calls, an Auror team was dispatched to his residence in Nottingham. The man who led the struggle against You-Know-Who so fiercely that he came under criticism, was gone._

_One Auror anonymously reported to the Prophet that there appeared to be signs of a struggle at the Crouch residence. According to the Auror's candid account, the furniture in Headman Crouch's bedroom had not only been destroyed, but in many cases incinerated. The kitchen and dining room suffered severe fire damage, although the fire appeared to have been put out magically._

_Most tellingly, our Auror source tells us that Headman Crouch's House-Elf was found dead in the sitting room. The cause of death is unclear, but our source speculates that it may have been the Killing Curse._

_No official statement has come from the Ministry, but it is reported that Minister Fudge is in an uproar. Our Auror source tells us that search teams area already hard at work locating the missing... _story continued on pg. 2.

There was a little picture of Crouch at the top of the article, and Harry felt a dreadful sense of recognition. His immediate thought was to go to Dumbledore – but the Headmaster was not at the staff table like usual. He was about to flip to page two to continue reading about Crouch's disappearance when something else caught his eye:

_PETER PETTIGREW FOUND?_

_By Rita Skeeter_

_Peter Pettigrew, the wizard of famous misfortune, who was long believed to have been murdered by his own best friend, Sirius Black, in 1981, may not have been at all._

_A man was found early this morning by Hogsmeade resident Rosmerta Maddox, beautiful and popular proprietor of the the Three Broomsticks Inn, who gave the Daily Prophet an exclusive on the details._

"_I was just starting to sweep the walk," says the lovely Madam Rosmerta, "and right when I turned on the entrance light, I saw a man laying on his face, not a foot from my shoe._

"_It's not really unusual, to see people laying about the streets, but it's concerning considering the weather. The owners of _some_ establishments in this town just don't care about their customers' well-being. So I nudged this man with_ – Here, Harry had to flip to page eight to continue the story – _my shoe and I told him to go sleep in front of the Hogshead. He didn't respond at all, and I took a deep sort of breath and made a big breathy cloud, if you know what I mean, and it was at that time that I noticed that this man wasn't breathing. No clouds, see. I called the Aurors at once, then came back out._

"_The man was still laying on his face, in the mud, so I thought to turn him over and shutter his eyes. When I did, I saw on his chest a wooden sign, tied around him. And on that sign it said, in capitals, _I AM PETER PETTIGREW. _I would have scoffed, but I recognized the man – it looked just like old Peter, who I knew, although much older and beat up."_

_The Ministry has declined an official statement as to whether or not the man is indeed Peter Pettigrew, although they say that tests are under way to verify. Aurors at the scene said that the man, who ever he was, appeared to have been killed by a Heart-Starting Charm, an extremely useful medical spell which, if used inappropriately, can stop a beating heart just as easily as it can start one that isn't beating. The Charm was incidentally invented by Lord Hunfrio Blæc in 1048, a direct ancestor of Sirius Black._

All he could think was, _what a news day_.

Ron shocked him when he said said, "Do you want to come over for the holidays, Harry? All my brothers are coming home to the Burrow."

Harry thought that that sounded like a horrible idea. Even if Ron, Fred, George and Percy didn't blame him for what happened in the Chamber, what if Bill or Charlie, who he'd never met, or Ron's parents, did? Even if they didn't, it would be so terribly awkward that he just knew he would regret it. He told Ron, "I'm sorry. I've got a lot of studying to do over break and I need to stay here."

"Studying!" Ron balked. "Only Snape and McGonagall hand out homework over winter break."

Harry paused briefly, considering. Then he told Ron in an undertone, so that Hermione wouldn't hear, "You remember when McGonagall caught me and forbade me from going out to study at night? Well, long story short, I've been doing it anyway."

"You could be expelled!" Ron hissed at him, and Harry wondered at his uncharacteristic reaction.

Harry thought otherwise: although no one had expressly told him so, he greatly doubted that Dumbledore would expel him for any reason. Not one but _two _Voldemorts were coming back to power now, and Harry sincerely doubted that Dumbledore would want him anywhere except right under his nose. What he said was, "I'm being careful. I've been at it again for more than a month and no one's caught me."

Ron stared at him for a long time, then nodded slightly, obviously disappointed. He asked Harry for the paper, and after a while, said, "Oh, no. I bet they're going to double the dementor detail again. I'm not wandering a foot away from Lupin if they do."

Harry gave him a perplexed look. "Lupin? Does he carry chocolate around _all _the time?"

"Er – I dunno," Ron said, looking just as bewildered. "What would he need chocolate for? No, I mean that spell he has for fighting dementors. Don't you remem – oh, yeah, you weren't with us on the train! You didn't see! It was like a silver dog or wolf or something, just leaped right out of his wand and --"

"_Professor Lupin_?" Harry interrupted, disbelieving. Professor Lupin was a good teacher, and very adept at handling hinkypunks and Red Caps and grindylows, but whenever anyone mentioned the dementors in front of him, he just suggested chocolate. Maybe, like Healer Beckett, he just believed the Patronus Charm to be too difficult for third years.

Ron reeled the conversation back in. "Are you sure you don't want to come to my house, Harry? Maybe you could use a break from all your studying."

"No," Harry said regretfully. "I'm working on the Repelling Spell, and I need as much time as I can get."

Ron told him, thoughtfully, "Maybe you should work with Hermione. I'm sure it'll go much faster with her around."

Harry had thought of that: of course it would be easier to learn spells with someone to either cast them on, or to observe his progress, correct his wand movements, and so on. Not to mention, it would probably be safer: back when he was practicing the Reductor Curse, he had collapsed the secret passage he was in, a connection between the dungeons and the fourth floor, barely managing to escape without being crushed – if he had had someone else with him, the risk would have been much smaller. On the other hand, Hermione seemed so frazzled and exhausted all the time that he couldn't bare asking her to do more.

He told Ron, "No need, really. There's a Cannons game on in ten minutes – you want to go watch?" and led the boy up to the dormitory to watch the match on the little miniature field Hermione had gotten for him.

After the Cannons had lost by over five hundred points, Harry excused himself, and set off down to the third floor and, when he got there, knocked on an office door.

"Come in," a muffled voice called from within, and Harry grabbed the knob and quietly entered.

Lupin's office was filled with filing cabinets and crates and fish tanks. One tank held a variety of brightly-colored slugs crawled around on sticks and rocks within – they seemed to change hue every time Harry glanced at them. Another tank held what looked like the tragic crossing of a lizard and a squid, which glared malevolently at Harry with little yellow eyes. The weird animals were at least a step better than Lockhart's portraits of himself, however.

"Ah, Harry," Lupin said, sounding like he was genuinely glad to see him. "Please sit. Tea?"

"Oh. Yes, please."

Lupin tapped a kettle with his wand, and immediately it started whsitling. He made another little gesture and the boiling water shot right out of the spout and into the little green glass tea pot. Lupin didn't wait for it to seep at all, immediately pouring it out into two matching little green cups, but Harry's tea was dark and rich anyway. Lupin retrieved some cream from a box that had evidently been enchanted with a Cooling Charm, and offered it to Harry.

When sugar and cream were dealt with, Lupin smiled and said, "Now, to what do I owe this pleasure, Harry?"

"Professor," Harry began uncertainly. "I – my friend Ron told me that you worked the Patronus Charm on the Hogwarts Express."

Lupin nodded slightly, peering closely at Harry.

"I've – er, I've been practicing it, but I haven't gotten much, and I was wondering if you could give me some pointers?"

Lupin took a long sip of tea and said, "I imagine I could. Let me see what you have so far."

Uncertainly, Harry stood up and walked to the little clear area in the middle of the room. He closed his eyes, thinking about his first Quidditch match, and said the incantation.

A thick fog appeared before him, obscuring Harry's view of the professor, but not so much that he could not see the wide eyes and raised brows. He canceled the charm, and the haze was gone in an instant.

"Sit back down," Lupin instructed, and then was silent for a very long time. Harry drank his tea. It was _real cream_, not half-and-half, and he thought it was delicious and finished it very quickly. But then he wished he hadn't, because it gave him nothing better to do in the world while Lupin sat there thoughtfully than to stare into the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. He remembered, dimly, from _Unfogging the Future_, which he had read when he still thought he was taking Divination, that the future could be revealed through tea leaves... he thought he saw a goat in the leaves, but it was hard to say for certain.

Presently, Lupin said, "You are putting more than enough power into the spell, Harry. Much more. You see, your own strength is what causes that fog to appear – and that was an extremely powerful fog, Harry." Harry would have perked up at the praise, but something in Lupin's eyes made him feel low. He thought he saw pity, or regret, or something else. He set down his teacup on the desk.

Lupin continued, "What makes the fog solidify into an animal-shape isn't the strength of your magic, but the strength of your memory. You are doing the spell absolutely perfectly – except the memories you choose are just not potently happy enough. Look deeper. That's all I can tell you."

Harry was taken aback. It seemed as if Lupin had crossed some line, had said something both deeply personal and humiliating. It made him furious. "Thank you, Professor," he said, and stood up so quickly that he knocked over his teacup and it shattered on the ground.

"Please sit down, Harry," Lupin said imploringly. Harry stared at him darkly, but did as he was told. After Lupin spelled Harry's mess away, the professor said, "I have something else to discuss with you. Forgive me, but it will take some time. I'm sure you've heard most of this before, so I apologize if I bore you.

"Harry, when your father was at Hogwarts, I was in his same year and house, and I was among his closest friends. His very best friend, however, was Sirius Black."

Harry started. His father was friends with a criminal? Why was Lupin telling him this?

Lupin said, "Your father trusted Black so much that when he went into hiding with you and your mother, he entrusted Black to keep himself and his family safe. They were hidden under a charm, called the Fidelius Charm, which makes it impossible for anyone to find them unless one specific person, their secret-keeper, discloses their location.

"Eventually, of course, Voldemort came. We all thought that Sirius had betrayed your parents.

"The next day, Sirius cornered our other friend, Peter Pettigrew, in a crowded Muggle street, and killed him along with a dozen Muggles. Peter was heard asking Sirius, 'How could you betray Lily and James?' shortly before Sirius blew him up."

Lupin paused for a long time. Then, he indicated to the Daily Prophet and asked Harry if he'd read it that morning, and Harry nodded. Lupin said, "Obviously, that wasn't what really happened. What did happen, we cannot be sure – but I want you to realize, Harry, that there may be a chance that Sirius Black is innocent. I was down in Hogsmeade this morning, and I saw the body, and I really do believe that it was Peter. If it was, then it appears that he faked his own death – which has significant implications, as I'm sure you can see."

Harry nodded very slowly. He had never heard before that Sirius Black had betrayed his parents, or that his parents had been his friends, so he wasn't extremely attached to the idea. He said, "You think that he wasn't actually the secret-keeper."

Lupin only said, "There is a chance."

* * *

Sirius retrieved the mirror from his chest of drawers, and said, "Tom Gaunt!"

After a minute, Tom's face, young and handsome but very strained, appeared. Sirius asked, "Have you read the paper this morning, Tom?"

Tom grimaced. "No. I'm rather – indisposed. Theres a lot of dementors around, these days."

"I heard. That's what I called about, in fact. Tom, I'm going to hide out in my old house, the ancestral House of Black, and I wanted to know if you wanted to hide there as well."

Tom looked at first as if he was going to decline, but then his face changed, and he said, "Definitely."

"Meet me at the stile at the north end of Hogsmeade's main street. I'll be there in one hour."

At the appointed time and place, a runty goshawk alighted on the stile. After a moment, it heard a small bark coming from some near-by bushes, and flew off into them.

Suddenly, two men stood together in the bushes. One grabbed the other's arm, and sucked him through the dark, squeezing tunnel of Apparation.

The pair landed outside a decrepit, but extremely large building of brickwork, terraced to its smaller neighbors on either side. It cast the other houses around it in a shadow, looking like a spire rising above the walls of an old castle. None of the Muggles gave the bizarre tower so much as a passing glance as Sirius led Tom up to the front door.

"I haven't been here yet," Sirius said, "so be prepared for anything. I read my mum croaked it from dragon pox just a few days ago, so take some of this." He handed Tom a vial of purple fluid, then downed a matching one. Tom hesitated for a moment, then took the leap of faith and downed his vial as well. The Snake-Horcrux didn't even attempt to stop him, apparently thinking Sirius was trying to poison him. It tasted like an orange right after you brush your teeth, and made his nose burn like horseradish.

Sirius opened the door, and they came face-to-face with a young man in a terrible condition. Blue pox covered his arms, hands, face, and probably everywhere else. Smoke issued from his ears. His hair had mostly fallen out. Worst of all, his mouth, nose, and jaw had been replaced with a long, fanged, reptilian snout, which issued smoke continually.

Sirius's eyes were extremely wide as he said, "Regulus?"

The other man snorted, shooting little licks of flame from his nostrils, and said, "Shee-ree-aaaaashhhh...!"

Sirius moved to embrace Regulus, who stumbled back frightfully. "Contaaagooouuushhh!" he said.

"I've taken a potion, Regulus. Come here." They embraced tightly. When Tom realized that Sirius was sobbing and Regulus was puffing large plumes of fire rhythmically, he turned away in embarrassment. Eventually, Sirius said, "Tom Gaunt, meet my younger brother, Regulus Black."

Tom turned around, and he saw Regulus's profile for the first time. A tail was visibly making a bulge in the back of Regulus's robes. He said, "Nice to meet you, Regulus," but wouldn't shake the other's hand, potion or no potion.

"Nishe to meet shoo," Regulus said.

"Sirius," Tom said. "This man needs to go to Saint Mungo's immediately."

Sirius nodded grimly, his smile disappearing as swiftly as the light of a candle in the rain. "Yeah. I'll take him," he said, and started helping his brother out of the house.

"No!" Regulus exclaimed. "Deathhhh Eeeeatersshhh! Thhhey'll kill me!"

"You'll die like this, for sure," Tom said. "You'll just have to risk it."

Sirius nodded in agreement, and didn't give his younger brother a choice in the matter, dragging him against his will out of the house and into the drive. "I'll be back in a jiffy," he said unconvincingly.

"Sirius," Tom said. "That's a bad idea. Let me take him. They're not looking for me."

"He's my brother, Tom."

Tom almost told Sirius, _and you're my friend_, but made himself not. Instead, he said, "You'll be sent back to Azkaban."

"So what!"

"What about Harry?"

That made Sirius give pause. Eventually, grudgingly, he nodded. Tom took a hold on Regulus's shoulder, and dragged him the rest of the way to the street.

Regulus said, "I'm go-eeeng to die."

Tom couldn't help but agree. Regulus was past the point where modern medicine could help him. Instead, he said, "You'll be just fine."

"No. Leeeshen. I aaave a locket. It waaash thhheee Dark Lord'sh. I neeeed you to continuuuee what I shhtarted. Deeesh-troy thhheee locket for meee."

"Sure, anything," Tom said, not really listening. Then he took the dragon pocked man through the dark tunnel, and out into Saint Mungo's quarantine area.

* * *

Eventually, a solution was found for Tom in the tomes of the House of Black. He did not trust himself to think too much on his plan before he did it. He went two whole days without thinking about it at all, and then, suddenly, without the slightest preamble, with no thought as to what he was about to do, but as if he had planned it from the day of his birth, he turned his wand upon himself and shouted the Peacing Spell, "_Pectuspax!_"

And instantly, not only the Snake, but the Ring as well, fell dead silent within his head. His whole body felt spry and limber and light as a feather – the weight of the Snake had been on him so long that it was a great relief to finally be free of it – that he jumped and ran up and down the stairs of the house and laughed with the joy of liberty.

After a while, he calmed himself down and sat himself in one of the little old chairs in the library, and closed his eyes and thought about himself, not years in the future, but a year in the past, and wondered, what would I think if I was a year younger?

In that way he called forward the spirit of the Ring, which slowly and unsteadily awoke. They greeted each other, and Tom offered his apologies to the calm, quiet spirit of the Ring, which had never had a body or charms of thoughtfulness and was only slightly more sentient than the average silver ring. The Ring accepted his apologies, and, in his head, he had the idea that the Ring was putting itself on his finger and settling down to sleep.

Free, now, from the oppression of the Snake-Horcrux, Tom turned to the Diadem of Ravenclaw, which he had recovered so many weeks ago from the Hiding Place, the same day that Sirius had first met with Pettigrew. The Snake had for too long prevented him from taking the Diadem in, from basking in its wealth of power and knowledge. So long he had waited, and so miserably, the object of his desire feet away from him, but he unable to take it.

The Snake had been Voldemort's trick. He had taken his most valuable Horcrux, and had willingly imparted it upon his enemy – but on his own terms; intricately seditious Memory Charms, designed to destroy one's knowledge and memory without taking their loyalties or their personality, had been cast upon the Snake.

Voldemort had delivered this Snake-Horcrux to Tom, and Tom had taken it in thirstily. The power that he had discharged upon Voldemort had only served to make the phantom more powerful, closer to a real being. The soul that Tom had taken had been a plant, designed by Voldemort to take over Tom's body and bring it to kneel to the phantom; to turn Tom into a servant.

The Ring had been steadfast, however. Tom had put the Ring-Horcrux in its first living body, and, for that, he received in exchange a loyalty equal to the Snake's. If it had not been for the Ring, Tom's own spirit would have been the one Peaced.

Now he was free from that Snake.

"_ARRIPANIMAM!_"

The knowledge that flowed into him from the Diadem was beautiful.

* * *

By the time Tom got to the cave, it was already too late.

He treated all of the booby traps like what they were: relics of his youth, of a time long past. He no longer felt young, and although his body had not changed, his mind had aged decades. The Diadem had been made into a Horcrux so much later than the Diary and the Ring that his entire perspective changed when he took it in. He remembered old friends that he at the same time could not recall meeting; he was adept at spells that he never learned.

So much older and wiser than he'd been when he'd cast these defensive enchantments, how could they pose a real barrier to him now?

So he slipped in to the island on the inner chamber quickly, and knew at sight that the locket he found there was only a locket, and not his Locket of Slytherin. He knew the second he laid his eyes on it that Voldemort had come through here and had replaced it – tauntingly leaving a false locket behind. It was cruel and it was just like something Tom himself would do.

He nearly threw the locket angrily into the water to let the inferi wrestle each other for possession of it, but something made him pause. He opened the little locket, and found a note.

_To the Dark Lord_

_I know I will be dead long before you read this_

_but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret._

_I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can._

_I face death in the hope that when you meet your match,_

_you will be mortal once more._

_R.A.B._

R.A.B.

Regulus Black.

Tom laughed. He felt like a fool. The Diadem had filled him with so much new knowledge that he had nearly forgotten everything he'd learned before. Hadn't Regulus said something about Voldemort's locket? It was so obvious, now.

He left in a hurry, and was back at the House of Black in minutes.

* * *

Harry walked up to the gargoyle and rapped on its head furiously.

The gargoyle stared at him blankly. He said, "Let me in! I need to speak to Professor Dumbledore!"

The gargoyle tilted its head slightly, as if considering. Then, it took a slow step to the side, and Harry ran past it, up the spiral staircase, and barged in to the office. "Voldemort is back," he gasped. "I – oh!"

The room contained not only Albus Dumbledore, but also the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, who was staring at Harry as though he were insane. Harry said weakly, "Minister Fudge! I – er, I'm Harry Potter. Pleased to meet you?"

Fudge let his amazed expression melt into a pleasant smile. He extended his hand for Harry to shake, and said, "The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Potter."

"Harry," Dumbledore said. "What did you say a moment ago?"

"I --" Harry glanced at the Minister, embarrassed. "I – er – Voldemort is back, sir."

Fudge's pleasant smile twitched into a condescending baring of teeth. He said, "Please don't use his name, Harry. And what would make you say that he's back?"

Harry glanced between the two men and cleared his throat. He spoke stoutly, "I had a vision." Fudge broke into a fit of coughs, and Harry raised his voice to speak over him. "And it wasn't the first time," he said, now with eyes only for Dumbledore, who showed no signs of amusement. "I had another the other night. I saw Voldemort telling someone – I don't know who – to go and capture his 'enemy from the old times.' I didn't think anything of it then; I thought it was a regular dream --"

"And then you read about Bartimus, and assumed he was whom You-Know-Who was referring to," the Minister finished for him.

"No," Harry said broadly. "I had a second vision last night, _before _I read the paper this morning. I saw Voldemort --"

"Don't say that," Fudge interrupted. The Minister looked like he was starting to get angry, and Harry was feeling very foolish.

"I saw _You-Know-Who_ come back. He used 'the blood of his enemy' and the 'flesh of his follower' and something else. And his servant called himself Barty Crouch."

Fudge looked stunned. "You think that Barty ran off to join You-Know-Who?" he asked, looking amazed at Harry's audacity. "Do you have any idea who you're talking about?"

Harry didn't say anything as Fudge stared scornfully at him.

Fudge turned to Dumbledore, and said, "_This_ boy is the one who told you about the Horcrux? I knew I was right to not believe that load of dragon dung. This is absurd."

Dumbledore looked pained. He asked Harry to step outside for a moment, and Harry got up angrily and waited in the other room. He heard a brief snatch of the Minister, shouting, before someone cast a silencing spell. He muttered to himself angrily, "Hermione's right. I should transfer to Durmstrang."

After several moments, he heard Dumbledore call from the inside of his office, "Harry. Come in, please," and he did. He sat down hard in one of the squishy chairs in front of Dumbledore's desk, and it let out a little puff of air.

"Harry, first let me say, thank you for coming to me directly about this. Your vision – it's making me concerned in more than one way.

"When your scar was made, a connection between you and Voldemort was created. You're seeing through that connection when you have these visions. I'm worried that Voldemort might be able to see visions of you, as well.

"I've arranged private lessons for you with Professor Snape. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, you are to report to his office at six o'clock sharp. He will be instructing you in Occlumency, which will help you control your connection with Voldemort."

Harry glared. Do the right thing, and this is what you get: a Minister who thinks your mad, and extra lessons with Snape. He said, "Yes, sir," and left the office in a hurry.


End file.
